Constructions of Masculinity in British Literature from the Middle Ages to the Present (Global Masculinities)

An in-depth analysis into the construction of male identity as well as a unique and comprehensive historical overview of how masculinity has been constructed in British literature from the Middle Ages to the present. This book is an important contribution to the emerging field of masculinity studies. This collection provides a unique and comprehensive historical overview of how masculinity has been constructed within national literature. Through a sustained focus on the nexus between gender, sexuality, language, and literature for the construction of identity, it represents an important contribution to the theoretical understanding of key British literary texts from the perspective of masculinity studies Front Matter....Pages i-viii Front Matter....Pages 1-1 Charting the Field of Masculinity Studies; or, Toward a Literary History of Masculinities....Pages 3-18 The Construction of the Construction of Masculinities....Pages 19-32 Masculinity Inside Out: The Biopolitical Lessons of Transgender and Intersex Studies....Pages 33-48 Front Matter....Pages 49-49 Wrestling in the Moonlight: The Politics of Masculinity in the Middle English Popular Romance Gamelyn....Pages 51-67 “Merit, Justice, Gratitude, Duty, Fidelity”: Images of Masculinity in Autobiographies of Early Modern English Gentlewomen and Aristocrats....Pages 69-87 The ‘Crisis’ of Masculinity in Seventeenth-Century England....Pages 89-108 Augustan Manliness and Its Anxieties: Shaftesbury and Swift....Pages 109-127 Fortified Masculinity: Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe as a Literary Emblem of Western Male Identity....Pages 129-146 The Invisible Center: Conceptions of Masculinity in Victorian Fiction—Realist, Crime, Detective, and Gothic....Pages 147-168 The Props of Masculinity in Late Victorian Adventure Fiction....Pages 169-186 Front Matter....Pages 187-187 A Man Could Stand Up: Masculinities and the Great War....Pages 189-208 Baffled Hopes and Bad Habits: Men, Marriage, and Conformity in Queer Theory and Gay Representation....Pages 209-228 Cultural Hybridity and Fluid Masculinities in the Postcolonial Metropolis: Individualized Gender Identities in Hanif Kureishi’s The Buddha of Suburbia and The Black Album....Pages 229-245 Who Is That Man? Lad Trouble in High Fidelity, The Best a Man Can Get, and White City Blue....Pages 247-266 Back Matter....Pages 267-278 "Constructions of Masculinity in British Literature from the Middle Ages to the Present provides an in-depth analysis into the construction of male identity as well as a unique and comprehensive historical overview of how masculinity has been constructed. This book is an important contribution to the emerging field of masculinity studies"-- Provided by publisher