Bernard Ribémont, Mabrien ou le cheminement d'un chevalier du XVe s. en route vers le roman d'aventure, Le Moyen Age, 113, 2007 : p. 335-359

Résumé sur le site de la revue : Mabrien is the last part of the written Montauban cycle, dated 1462. This text describes a hero, who could be considered a “hero of closure”. In a cycle that includes the romance form, it can be supposed that this hero must have particular characteristics making him not just “an additional hero”. We will therefore start from the hypothesis that such a character is connected in a number of ways to the origin, to the foundation, which implies being inscribed in the myth: having to “bring the adventures to a close”, the hero of closure is “mythic” in the sense that he has a privileged relationship with the forces of nature, with the society he is remodelling, possibly with the Other-World. Furthermore, in order for this culmination to be legitimate, the hero must be shown to be profoundly integrated into the cycle; and his journey must be one of culmination which cannot simply be measured by the success of his exploits. The hero of closure must have what the others have, even if it means reliving adventures that are identical to those of his predecessors – inscribing him into the cycle, while giving him a post-position justifying his bearing a higher dimension in these adventures – but he must go further and in particular resolve all the tensions generated during the course of the cycle. These different elements of investigation will be discussed in this article.