Car ils débattent d‘une bien molle façon. Die Metaphorik der verweichlichten Männlichkeit in Rhetoriktheorie und Sprachreflexion der französischen Renaissance

Abstract

French humanists, as soon as they think about languages in a comparative way, are haunted by the inadequacy of their language. This haunting is expressed through a precise and recurrent metaphor, that compares the proper use of language to a masculine ideal. This reflection leads to a binary opposition between two stylistic genres which rejects any softness (both physical and stylistic) as a sign of effeminacy and opts instead for a parallel between the male body and the ideal style. Based on these attributes, the physical metaphor of style has developed since Antiquity as a fixed and closed system that encompasses both: its ideal aspect and its failures. The place of "mollesse" in this system is obvious: it encompasses everything that presents itself as the counter-model to the ideal of manhood because it introduces weakness and failure, lack of moderation and lack of discernment into the world of male vigour. The present study pursues an analysis of this metaphor of gendered style in two stages: in the first stage it is a question of undertaking a return ad fontes in order to retrace the imaginary in French poetry since its origins. Secondly, we propose to consider the reciprocal repercussions between the anthropological metaphor and its human counterpart with a view to studying the impact that the use of language (and the ambition to normalise it according to a restrictive ideal) can have on the perception of the human being and the conception of gender.