From Chivalry to Terrorism : War and the Changing Nature of Masculinity

by Braudy, Leo

• ISBN13: 9780679450351
• ISBN10: 0679450351
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-10-01
• Publisher: Knopf

Summary

From Chivalry to Terrorismis a brilliant exploration of the conscious and unconscious ways in which European and American cultures have established an essential role for military and warrior virtue in defining masculinity. Beginning with the world of honor in the chivalric Middle Ages and ending in our age of global terrorism and limited war, Leo Braudy shows how perceptions and images of masculinity have changed in relation to major wars, advances in military technology, mutations in the idea of the state and how it wages war, and shifting attitudes toward both sexuality and citizenship. Gathering insights from history, literature, and artas well as from facts and fantasies about male sexualityBraudy focuses on pivotal developments such as the revolution caused by gunpowder in the fifteenth century, by the mass armies of the eighteenth century, by the fears of national degeneracy in the nineteenth century, and by weapons of mass destruction in the twentieth century. He also examines less obvious topics such as the growth of sports and gymnastics, the impact of the American West on the national and international imagination, and the efforts of the promoters of a "civilized" male identity to distinguish it from the savage barbarian on the one hand and from women and minority forms of masculinity on the other. Finally, he makes clear that the view of a renewed warrior masculinity is at the heart of the propaganda of the Islamic terrorists, as it was for Hitler and Mussolini. War is carried on in the name of a warrior past when men were truly men. The enemy is the West, where gender is a continuum rather than the absolute set of differences between male and female that the warrior sensibility requires. The war against terrorism is thus less a literal war about territory and resources than it is a symbolic war about how men should be and behave. In writing this unique history of masculinity, Braudy discusses both real and imagined characters. Among them are Don Quixote, Henry V, Oliver Cromwell, Don Juan, Frederick the Great, Napoleon, Custer, T. E. Lawrence, Osama bin Laden, and the heroes of Stephen Crane and Ernest Hemingway. At its heart,From Chivalry to Terrorismis about the metamorphosis of masculinity; it is a powerful and persuasive argument against the assumption that all sexual behavior is innate. Countering the sociobiological emphasis on the fixity of human nature, it stresses human changeability and responsiveness to circumstances.

Author Biography

Leo Braudy is University Professor and Bing Professor of English at the University of Southern California.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Arms and Men	p. xi
Men and Masculinity
Remember My Name	p. 3
The Language of the Body	p. 9
Initiation: The First Wound	p. 17
Warriors and Women	p. 21
Armor and Honor
The Purity of War	p. 29
The Warrior as Barbarian	p. 35
The Shape of Fury	p. 42
The Shield of Honor	p. 49
The Spectacle of Knighthood	p. 56
The Birth of Genealogy: Where Did Knights Come From?	p. 63
Knighthood, Christianity, and Chivalry: The Uneasy Truce	p. 71
Chivalry in Theory and Practice	p. 81
The Solitude of the Wandering Knight	p. 91
The Inspiration to Battle and the Lure of Love	p. 103
From Armor to Personality
Uniforms and the Eclipse of Armor	p. 117
National Identity and the Cause of Religion	p. 124
Money, Nationalism, and the "Military Revolution"	p. 132
Don Quixote and the Fiction of Male Individuality	p. 143
Tests of the Body: Trial by Combat, Single Combat, and the Duel	p. 150
Pirates and Highwaymen	p. 158
The Rites of "Man"	p. 162
The Battle and the Sexes
War and Pornography	p. 175
Performance Anxiety	p. 185
The Opposite Sex	p. 199
Heroes from Below
War and Antiwar	p. 217
The Field of Battle: Monarch's Eye	p. 224
The Field of Battle: Soldier's Eye	p. 233
The Uniformed Nation	p. 240
Citizens into Soldiers, Soldiers into Citizens	p. 246
Volleys or Aiming, Regular Army or Militia?	p. 256
The Nineteenth Century: War and National Identity
Technological Progress and the Lost Cause	p. 265
Barbaric Energy and Civilized Manners	p. 291
The Boy General	p. 302
The Statistics of Human Nature: Norms and the Abnormal	p. 310
The Specter of Degeneracy	p. 317
Masculine, Feminine, Effeminate: Sex Among the Civilized	p. 327
Sports and the Manly Ideal	p. 338
The Crucible of the 1890s	p. 349
Be Prepared	p. 363
The Twentieth Century: Weapons of Mass Destruction and the Warrior Spirit
Honor in No-Man's-Land	p. 373
Death at a Distance	p. 383
Reason in Madness	p. 390
Primitive Body and Machine Body	p. 395
T.E. Lawrence: The Resurrection of Adventure	p. 404
Front Line at Home: Pacifism and Paramilitary Violence	p. 415
The Thirty-one Years' War: The Supreme Leader and the Solitary Champion	p. 435
The Threat of Impurity: Racism and Misogyny	p. 443
Targeting Civilians	p. 457
No Retreat and Unconditional Surrender	p. 466
Shadows on the Wall and the Common Man	p. 475
Brainwashing and the War Within	p. 483
The Solitude of the Westerner	p. 494
Postwar Male Sexuality and the Kinsey Reports	p. 501
No Body's Perfect	p. 512
War Without a Front: Vietnam and the End of the Cold War	p. 519
Make Love, Not War: Theories of Innate Aggression and the Antiwar Movement	p. 531
Parting Words: Terrorism as a Gender War	p. 542
Bibliography: Notes and Sources	p. 557
Acknowledgments	p. 591
Index	p. 593
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.