Download or read book The Changing Fictions of Masculinity written by David Rosen and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 1993 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a sensitive and provocative study of six great works of British literature, David Rosen traces the evolution of masculinity, inviting readers to contemplate the shifting joys and sorrows men have experienced throughout the last millennium, and the changing but constant tensions between their lives and ideals. Focusing on Beowulf, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Hamlet, Paradise Lost, Hard Times, and Sons and Lovers, Rosen shows how the actions of heroes fail to resolve tensions between masculine ideals and male experiences.
Download or read book Fictions of Masculinity written by Peter F. Murphy and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 1994-07 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We are just beginning to understand masculinity as a fiction or a localizable, historical, and therefore unstable construct. This book points the way to a much-needed interrogation of the many modes of masculinity, as represented in literature. Both women and men who are engaged in critical thinking about genders and sexualities will find these essays always thoughtful and often provocative. —Thas E. Morgan, Associate Professor of English, Arizona State University Peter Murphy has assembled an innovative, challenging, and important set of contributions to a growing field of inquiry into constructions of masculinities in literature, inspired principally by feminist and gay studies. Illuminatingly crossing lines of genders, sexualities, cultures, and methodologies, Fictions of Masculinity greatly advances our understanding of representations of men, masculinities, misandry, and misogyny in a wide range of literary works and genres, and helps us to imagine (and thereby ultimately bring about) alternative constructions. —Harry Brod, Editor, The Making of Masculinities: The New Men's Studies, A Mensch Among Men: Explorations in Jewish Masculinity, and Theorizing Masculinities. Women writing about women dominates contemporary work on sexuality. Men have been far more willing to discuss female sexuality than male sexuality, while the most radical and insightful analyses of male sexuality have come from women. When men consider the issue of female sexuality they often speak from assumptions of security about their own unexamined sexuality. This book maintains that men have to interrogate their own sexuality if there is to be a revision of phallocentric discourse; and, that this revision of masculinity must be done in dialogue with women. The essays included in this collection examine the deep structure of masculine codes. They ask the question Who are the men in modern literature? Examining the force of the dominant values of Western masculinity, they synthesize insights from feminism, psychoanalysis, post-structuralism, and new historicism. These perspectives help explain how male sexuality has been structured by fictional representations. By examining the images of masculinity in modern literature, the essays explore traditional and non-traditional roles of men in society and in personal relationships. They look at how men are represented in literature, the fiction of manhood. They attempt to unravel the assumptions behind these representations by looking at the implications of this imagination. And they speculate on possibilities for creating a new imaginary of masculinity by identifying what literature has to say about that change. With analyses of a range of genres (novels, poetry, plays and autobiography), Western and Third World literatures, and theoretical perspectives, Fictions of Masculinity provides a significant contribution to this rapidly growing field of study. Contributors are: David Bergman (Towson State University), Miriam Cooke (Duke University), Martin Danahy (Emory University), Richard Dellamora (Trent University, Ontario), Leonard Duroche (University of Minnesota), Jim Elledge (Illinois State University), Alfred Habegger (University of Kansas), Suzanne Kehde (California Polytechnic University, San Luis Obispo), David Leverenz (University of Florida), Christopher Metress (Wake Forest University), Peter F. Murphy (SUNY, Empire State College), Rafael Prez-Torres (University of Pennsylvania), David Radavich (Eastern Illinois University), and Peter Schwenger (St. Vincent University, Nova Scotia).
Download or read book The Will to Change written by bell hooks and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2004-01-06 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From New York Times bestselling author, feminist pioneer, and cultural icon bell hooks, a timelessly necessary treatise on how patriarchy and toxic masculinity hurts us all, with a new introduction by poet Ross Gay. Feminist writing did not tell us about the deep inner misery of men. Everyone needs to love and be loved—including men. But to know love, men must be able to look at the ways in which patriarchal culture keeps them from understanding themselves. In The Will to Change, bell hooks provides a compassionate guide for men of all ages and identities to understand how to be in touch with their feelings, and how to express versus repress the emotions that are a fundamental part of who we are. With trademark candor and fierce intelligence, hooks addresses the most common concerns of men, such as fear of intimacy and loss of their patriarchal place in society, in new and challenging ways. The Will to Change “creates space for men to acknowledge their traumas and heal—not only for their sake, but for the sake of everyone in their lives” (BuzzFeed).
Download or read book Masculinity and the Trials of Modern Fiction written by Marco Wan and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-11-10 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do lawyers, judges and jurors read novels? And what is at stake when literature and law confront each other in the courtroom? Nineteenth-century England and France are remembered for their active legal prosecution of literature, and this book examines the ways in which five novels were interpreted in the courtroom: Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, Paul Bonnetain’s Charlot s’amuse, Henry Vizetelly’s English translation of Émile Zola’s La Terre, Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray and Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness. It argues that each of these novels attracted legal censure because they presented figures of sexual dissidence – the androgyne, the onanist or masturbator, the patricide, the homosexual and the lesbian – that called into question an increasingly fragile normative, middleclass masculinity. Offering close readings of the novels themselves, and of legal material from the proceedings, such as the trial transcripts and judicial opinions, the book addresses both the doctrinal dimensions of Victorian obscenity and censorship, as well as the reading practices at work in the courtroom. It situates the cases in their historical context, and highlights how each trial constitutes a scene of reading – an encounter between literature and the law – through which different forms of masculinity were shaped, bolstered or challenged.
Download or read book Masculinity in Contemporary New York Fiction written by Peter Ferry and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-08-21 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Masculinity in Contemporary New York Fiction is an interdisciplinary study that presents masculinity as a key thematic concern in contemporary New York fiction. This study argues that New York authors do not simply depict masculinity as a social and historical construction but seek to challenge the archetypal ideals of masculinity by writing counter-hegemonic narratives. Gendering canonical New York writers, namely Paul Auster, Bret Easton Ellis, and Don DeLillo, illustrates how explorations of masculinity are tied into the principal themes that have defined the American novel from its very beginning. The themes that feature in this study include the role of the novel in American society; the individual and (urban) society; the journey from innocence to awareness (of masculinity); the archetypal image of the absent and/or patriarchal father; the impact of homosocial relations on the everyday performance of masculinity; male sexuality; and the male individual and globalization. What connects these contemporary New York writers is their employment of the one of the great figures in the history of literature: the flâneur. These authors take the flâneur from the shadows of the Manhattan streets and elevate this figure to the role of self-reflexive agent of male subjectivity through which they write counter-hegemonic narratives of masculinity. This book is an essential reference for those with an interest in gender studies and contemporary American fiction.
Download or read book Alternative Masculinities in Feminist Speculative Fiction written by Michael Pitts and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2021-06-01 with total page 169 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alternative Masculinities in Feminist Speculative Fiction: A New Man traces efforts within American feminist utopias to imagine healthier conceptions of manhood. As this analysis illuminates, feminist works envisioning the improved society and its attending masculinities constitute an overlooked site for mining new masculinities. During the years in which such utopias gained popularity —the early 1970s to the mid-2010s—these novels grew more complex, challenging essentialist conceptions of masculinity and female experience. These texts vary in their focus but share an interest in replacing patriarchal masculinities with an alternative informed by second wave and intersectional feminism. This book analyzes the centrality of alternative masculinities to these ideal societies and the ways feminist writers present new conceptions of manhood pivotal to discussions surrounding the ongoing crisis of American masculinity.
Download or read book Anxious Men written by Baldwin Clive Baldwin and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2020-03-02 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores representations of men and masculinity in American fiction published after the Second World WarOffers readings of a wide selection of postwar American novels from 1945 to the mid-1950s, including canonical works, from the unique perspective of their representation of male identityProvides rich comparative insights through analysis of fiction by writers of diverse race, class and sexualityDemonstrates how gender theory generates insights into the constitution of American masculinity in fictionFocusing on a complex and contentious period that was formative in shaping American society and culture in the twentieth century, this book sheds new light on the ways in which fiction engaged with contemporary notions of masculinity. It draws on gender theory and analysis of writers from diverse backgrounds of race, class and sexuality to provide rich comparative insights into the constitution of American masculinity in fiction. The extensive range of novels considered includes fresh analyses of key authors such as James Baldwin, Truman Capote, Patricia Highsmith, Jack Kerouac, Norman Mailer, Ann Petry, J. D. Salinger and Gore Vidal.
Download or read book The Man They Wanted Me to Be written by Jared Yates Sexton and published by Catapult. This book was released on 2020-04-14 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This provocative, “critically important” memoir of working-class boyhood in rural Indiana offers a searing cultural analysis of toxic masculinity in American culture (NPR). As progressivism changes American society, and globalism shifts labor away from traditional manufacturing, the roles that have been prescribed to men since the Industrial Revolution have been rendered obsolete. Donald Trump's campaign successfully leveraged male resentment and entitlement, and now, with Trump as president and the rise of the #MeToo movement, it’s clear that our current definitions of masculinity are outdated and even dangerous. Deeply personal and thoroughly researched, the author of The People Are Going to Rise Like the Waters Upon Your Shore has turned his keen eye to our current crisis of masculinity using his upbringing in rural Indiana to examine the personal and societal dangers of the patriarchy. The Man They Wanted Me to Be examines how we teach boys what’s expected of men in America, and the long–term effects of that socialization―which include depression, shorter lives, misogyny, and suicide. Sexton turns his keen eye to the establishment of the racist patriarchal structure which has favored white men, and investigates the personal and societal dangers of such outdated definitions of manhood. “ . . . exposes the true cost of toxic masculinity . . . and takes aim at the patriarchal structures in American society that continue to uphold an outdated ideal of manhood.” —Book Riot
Download or read book Masculinities without Men written by Jean Bobby Noble and published by UBC Press. This book was released on 2010-10-01 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Conventional ideas about gender and sexuality dictate that people born with male bodies naturally possess both a man's identity and a man's right to authority. Recent scholarship in the field of gender studies, however, exposes the complex political technologies that construct gender as a supposedly unchanging biological essence with self-evident links to physicality, identity, and power. In Masculinities without Men? Jean Bobby Noble explores how the construction of gender was thrown into crisis during the twentieth century, resulting in a permanent rupture in the sex/gender system, and how masculinity became an unstable category, altered across time, region, social class, and ethnicity.
Download or read book The Fictions that Shape Men s Lives written by Christopher Kilmartin and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-04-21 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Fictions that Shape Men’s Lives is structured around a number of key ‘fictions’ of masculinity, such as beliefs in biological determinism, the inevitability of men’s violence and the opposition of the sexes, and proceeds to expose them to be wholly or partially unfounded. Examining the social pressure to behave and experience the self in ways that culture prescribes for the bodies we are perceived as having, this book provides an awareness of widely-held but distorted assumptions of gender. It also seeks to put men into the position to resist masculine social pressures when conforming to it conflicts with important life goals or values and/or causes harm. Making use of an informal, storytelling style provides an accessibility to those interested in breaking down their preconceptions of gender and masculinity, as well making links to key theories and concepts. This is a lively and engaging book for undergraduates studying introduction to Gender, Sexuality and Masculinity courses.
Download or read book The New Man Masculinity and Marriage in the Victorian Novel written by Tara MacDonald and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-10-06 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By tracing the rise of the New Man alongside novelistic changes in the representations of marriage, MacDonald shows how this figure encouraged Victorian writers to reassess masculine behaviour and to re-imagine the marriage plot in light of wider social changes. She finds examples in novels by Dickens, Anne Brontë, George Eliot and George Gissing.
Download or read book Aging Masculinities in Contemporary U S Fiction written by Josep M. Armengol and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-07-26 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book focuses on representations of aging masculinities in contemporary U.S. fiction, including shifting perceptions of physical and sexual prowess, depression, and loss, but also greater wisdom and confidence, legacy, as well as new affective patterns. The collection also incorporates factors such as race, sexuality and religion. The volume includes studies, amongst others, on Philip Roth, Paul Auster, Toni Morrison, Ernest Gaines, and Edmund White. Ultimately, this study proves that men’s aging experiences as described in contemporary U.S. literature and culture are as complex and varied as those of their female counterparts.
Download or read book Masculinity in Fiction and Film written by Brian Baker and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2008-06-08 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Covers wide range of popular British and American fiction and film including Westerns, spy fiction, science fiction and crime narratives.
Download or read book Rewriting White Masculinities in Contemporary Fiction and Film written by Josep M. Armengol and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Masculinity and Syrian Fiction written by Lovisa Berg and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-11-18 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What can novels tell us about masculinity in Syria? In this book, Lovisa Berg explores over 20 Syrian novels covering the last 50 years of the 20th century. Uniquely, she examines only female writers in order to gauge the changing ways in which Syrian women perceived the function of masculinity, and the impact certain attitudes towards masculinity have on men, women, children and Syrian society, from a female perspective. The works of writers from Kulit Khuri to Usayma Darwish are analysed to explore changing attitudes to gender in Syria and the Middle East, as well as the political upheavals within the country and region. We see the idealistically portrayed men in the novels of female authors in the 1950s give way in time to a more critical depictions of patriarchy. Above all, we see through the use of novels a plethora of critiques of masculine hegemony in Syrian society, the authors of which are able with the use of fiction to reorganise and question maleness in a way denied to them in reality. This book will be of interest to scholars of Contemporary Syrian and Arabic Literature, Masculinity Studies and Women's Studies.
Download or read book American Masculine written by Shann Ray and published by Graywolf Press. This book was released on 2011-06-21 with total page 189 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2010 Bakeless Prize for Fiction, a muscular debut that reconfigures the American West The American West has long been a place where myth and legend have flourished. Where men stood tall and lived rough. But that West is no more. In its place Shann Ray finds washedup basketball players, businessmen hiding addictions, and women fighting the inexplicable violence that wells up in these men. A son struggles to accept his father's apologies after surviving a childhood of beatings. Two men seek empty basketball hoops on a snowy night, hoping to relive past glory. A bull rider skips town and rides herd on an unruly mob of passengers as he searches for a thief on a train threading through Montana's Rocky Mountains. In these stories, Ray grapples with the terrible hurt we inflict on those we love, and finds that reconciliation, if far off, is at least possible. The debut of a writer who is out to redefine the contours of the American West, American Masculine is a deeply felt and fiercely written ode to the country we left behind.
Download or read book Masculinity in Contemporary New York Fiction written by Peter Ferry and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-08-21 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Masculinity in Contemporary New York Fiction is an interdisciplinary study that presents masculinity as a key thematic concern in contemporary New York fiction. This study argues that New York authors do not simply depict masculinity as a social and historical construction but seek to challenge the archetypal ideals of masculinity by writing counter-hegemonic narratives. Gendering canonical New York writers, namely Paul Auster, Bret Easton Ellis, and Don DeLillo, illustrates how explorations of masculinity are tied into the principal themes that have defined the American novel from its very beginning. The themes that feature in this study include the role of the novel in American society; the individual and (urban) society; the journey from innocence to awareness (of masculinity); the archetypal image of the absent and/or patriarchal father; the impact of homosocial relations on the everyday performance of masculinity; male sexuality; and the male individual and globalization. What connects these contemporary New York writers is their employment of the one of the great figures in the history of literature: the flâneur. These authors take the flâneur from the shadows of the Manhattan streets and elevate this figure to the role of self-reflexive agent of male subjectivity through which they write counter-hegemonic narratives of masculinity. This book is an essential reference for those with an interest in gender studies and contemporary American fiction.
