Literature as a combat sport

"With a pen of iron on paper of steel", this is how Ronsard, a fighter for the Catholic and royal cause, addressed Catherine de Médicis in 1562. " The pen is mightier than the sword", summed up Edward Bulwer-Lytton in his 1839 drama Richelieu. Gautier said of Scudéry, Captain Fracasse, that he "left the sword for the pen and used one no less well than the other". Since Homer and Hesiod, poetry has also been agonistic or pugilistic. In the ^nineteenth century, duels and literary disembowelment were the order of the day. In the ^twentieth century, the image of boxing took over with Hemingway and Montherlant. The long history of the metaphor of the "iron pen", then of "fencing", of "literary boxing", will be explored.