Masculinity in Literature

We take for granted the idea that white, middle-class, straight masculinity connotes total control of emotions, emotional inexpressivity, and emotional isolation. That men repress their feelings as they seek their fortunes in the competitive worlds of business and politics seems to be a given. This collection of essays by prominent literary and cultural critics rethinks such commonly held views by addressing the history and politics of emotion in prevailing narratives about masculinity. How did the story of the emotionally stifled U.S. male come into being? What are its political stakes? Will the "release" of straight, white, middle-class masculine emotion remake existing forms of power or reinforce them? This collection forcefully challenges our most entrenched ideas about male emotion. Through readings of works by Thoreau, Lowell, and W. E. B. Du Bois, and of twentieth century authors such as Hemingway and Kerouac, this book questions the persistence of the emotionally alienated male in narratives of white middle-class masculinity and addresses the political and social implications of male emotional release.

The unique social history of the early modern period in England marked a crucial moment in the cultural conception and representation of masculinity. This volume explores the various strategies used by 17th- and 18th-century writers to portray the masculine identity. Included are chapters on such authors as Thomas Carew, Andrew Marvell, Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, John Dryden, Daniel Defoe, and Samuel Richardson. Together, the expert contributors offer a broad perspective on the social and political dynamics of early modern masculinity. Though incorporating a variety of critical approaches, the contributors all examine the inherent anxiety and problems associated with masculinity and its representation. The chapters demonstrate how significant literary texts of the period worked to provide not only idealized images of the masculine but also contesting ones. Thus the volume shows that the literary representation of masculinity in the early modern period was a dynamic and evolving process.

Shakespeare on Masculinity is an important and original study of the way Shakespeare's plays engage with a subject that provoked bitter public dispute. Robin Headlam Wells argues that Shakespeare took a skeptical view of the militant-Protestant cult of heroic masculinity. Following a series of brilliant portraits of the dangerously charismatic warrior-hero, Shakespeare turned at the end of his writing career to a different kind of leader. Plays receiving close readings include The Tempest, Henry V, Troilus and Cressida, Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, and Coriolanus.

Although their settings span a wide geographical area, from the South Pacific to India, Maugham's exotic short stories, novels, and travelogues all, ultimately, focus on the creation of a masculine British identity. In this first book to address Maugham's fiction in light of recent developments in postcolonial, gender, and cultural theory, Holden argues that Maugham's work can be understood as an attempt to negotiate between two alternative masculine identities: those of private homosexual and public writer. Holden identifies Maugham's attempts to cultivate a public persona as a writer whose heterosexuality is confirmed through a process of control of language. Furthermore, Holden illuminates the fluidity of language that Maugham, in contrast to his public persona, associated with homosexuality. The basis of this study is the provocative notion that Maugham's texts, despite their exotic locations, ultimately dramatize a struggle over masculine British identity.

O'Connell examines the role of socially constructed masculinity in Updike's Rabbit tetralogy - Rabbit Run, Rabbit Redux, Rabbit Is Rich, and Rabbit at Rest - convincingly arguing that the four novels comprise the longest and most comprehensive representation of masculinity in American literature and place Updike firmly with the precursors of the contemporary movement among men to reevaluate their cultural inheritance. A disturbing element exists, O'Connell determines, in both the texts of the Rabbit novels and in the critical community that examines them. In the novels, O'Connell finds substantial evidence to demonstrate patterns of psychological and physical abuse toward women, citing as the culminating example the mounting toll of literally or metaphorically dead women in the texts. Critics who view Updike as a nonviolent writer and strangely overlook Rabbit's repressive and violent behaviors avoid a discomforting but crucial aspect of the characterization. Although she examines negative aspects of Rabbit's behavior, O'Connell avoids the oversimplification of labeling Updike a misogynist. Instead, she looks closely at the forces shaping Rabbit's gender identity as well as at the ways he experiences masculinity and the ways his gender identity affects his personal and spiritual development, his relationships, and, ultimately, his society. As she discusses these issues, O'Connell uses the term patriarchy in its broadest sense to refer to the practice of centralizing the male and marginalizing the female in all areas of human life. Patriarchal ideology - the assumptions, values, ideas, and patterns of thought that perpetuate the arrangement - is written as hidden text, permeating everyaspect of culture, particularly language, from which it spreads to other signifying systems. Contrary to conventional critical wisdom, the Rabbit tetralogy is not a straightforward chronicle; the novels create meaning by chal

In Masculinity Besieged? Xueping Zhong looks at Chinese literature and films produced during the 1980s to examine male subjectivities in contemporary China. Reading through a feminist psychoanalytic lens, Zhong argues that understanding the nature of male subjectivities as portrayed in literature and film is crucial to understanding China's ongoing quest for modernity.

Before the 1990s' onslaught of popular culture decentered the role of intellectuals within the nation, they had come to embody Chinese masculinity during the previous decade. The focus on masculinity in literature had become unprecedented in scale and the desire for "real men" began to permeate Chinese popular culture, making icons out of Rambo and Takakura Ken. Stories by Zhang Xianliang and Liu Heng portraying male anxiety about masculine sexuality are employed by Zhong to show how "marginal" males negotiate their sexual identities in relation to both women and the state. Looking at writers popular among not only the well-educated but also the working and middle classes, she discusses works by Han Shaogong, Yu Hua, and Wang Shuo and examines instances of self-loathing male voices, particularly as they are articulated in Mo Yan's well-known work Red Sorghum. In her last chapter Zhong examines "roots literature", which speaks of the desire to create strong men as a part of the effort to create a geopolitically strong Chinese nation. In an afterword, Zhong situates her study in the context of the 1990s.

This book will be welcomed by scholars of Chinese cultural studies, as well as in literary and gender studies.

Colonialism left an indelible mark on writers from the Caribbean. Many of the midcentury male writers, on the eve of independence, looked to England for their models. The current generation of authors, many of whom are women, have increasingly looked-& relocated-to the United States. Incorporating postcolonial theory, West Indian literature, feminist theory, & African American literary criticism, Making Men carves out a particular relationship between the Caribbean canon-as represented by C. L. R. James & V. S. Naipaul, among others-& contemporary Caribbean women writers such as Jean Rhys, & Jamaica Kincaid, Paule Marshall, & Michelle Cliff, who now live in the United States. Discussing the canonical Caribbean narrative as it reflects national identity under the domination of English cultural authority, Belinda Edmondson focuses particularly on the pervasive influence of Victorian sensibilities in the structuring of twentieth-century national identity. She shows that issues of race & English constructions of masculinity not only are central to West Indian identity but also connect Caribbean authorship to the English literary tradition. This perspective on the origins of West Indian literary nationalism then informs Edmondson's search for female subjectivity in current literature by West Indian women immigrants in America. Making Men compares the intellectual exile of men with the economic migration of women, linking the canonical male tradition to the writing of modern West Indian women & exploring how the latter write within & against the historical male paradigm in the continuing process of national definition. With theoretical claims that invite new discourse on English, Caribbean, & American ideas of exile, migration, race, gender identity, & literary authority, Making Men will be informative reading for those involved with postcolonial theory, African American & women's studies, & Caribbean literature.