ABSTRACT
The image of the bullfight occurs repeatedly among the writers of the School of Virility: Hemingway, Norman Mailer and Yukio Mishima are fascinated by it. The bull is of course an essentially phallic figure, virile deal. The contest is between two male figures who both seek a phallic triumph. Similarly the author who aspires towards virility in his writing risks, more plainly than other writers, the sense of effeminization if he fails. The metaphor of the bullfight has been most consciously developed and explored by Michel Leiris. Plainly Leiris has gone beyond the bullring. Leiris has moved from 'the terrain of truth', as Spaniards call the bullring, to the terrain of a rather different kind of truth. To fill a female 'gap' completely is also what is attempted in male sexual activity. Leiris adopts sexual imagery to speak both of bullfighting and of works of art.
