In the tradition of André Gide and Jean Genet, Michel Tournier aims to subvert conventional notions of gender and of acceptable sexual behaviour, in order to return us to a lost paradise of polymorphous perversity. The fourteen stories in Le Coq de Bruyère recreate the Platonic myth of the androgyne in order to call into question the normative social values of heterosexuality, marriage, and procreation.The gentle giant Logre (a pun on L’Ogre, the ogre) in “La Fugue du petit Poucet”, a generative figure, is hermaphroditic, like both Jehovah and Adam at the beginning of “La Famille Adam”. As a writer, however, Tournier adopts a tight formal logic of theme and variations inspired by Bach’s Art of the Fugue…
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Citation: Porter, Laurence M.. "Le Coq de bruyère". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 26 January 2011 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=31715, accessed 24 November 2024.]
