Writing Masculinities : Male Narratives in Twentieth Century Fiction

by Knights, Ben

• ISBN13: 9780312222451
• ISBN10: 0312222459
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1999-07-01
• Publisher: Palgrave

Summary

From gossip to novels, narratives provide one of the key modes in which we develop our sense of ourselves as gendered beings. The key is to explore the text in the processes through which it is read, and if we do so we find male plots and masculine identity are more problematic than we intend to assume. Ben Knights argues that engagement with fictional texts can generate insight into how gender norms are both developed and contested. In particular, he draws on contemporary work in both the social sciences and humanities to examine the performance of masculinity in contrasting fictions ranging from classic texts by D.H. Lawrence and Joseph Conrad to novels by John Fowles, Graham Swift, James Kelman, David Leavitt, and Ian McEwan. This book will be of value to all those engaged on the study of gender and especially masculinity in literature and culture.

Author Biography

Ben Knights is Professor of English and Cultural Studies at the University of Teesside. UK

Table of Contents

Preface	vii
Introduction	1	(9)
1 Masculinity as Fiction	10	(39)
Telling and Being	11	(9)
The Abuses of Enchantment	20	(14)
Masculinity and `English'	34	(15)
2 The Portrait of the Artist as a Man	49	(24)
The Ebony Tower	51	(6)
The Woman in the Reeds	57	(7)
Fathers and Gods	64	(9)
3 Fictional Forefathers: Conrad and Lawrence	73	(34)
Beckoning Shadows Dire	79	(9)
Women in Love	88	(8)
Discourse and Knowledge	96	(3)
Men in Love	99	(4)
Art and its Interpreters	103	(4)
4 Male Narratives	107	(27)
The Great Game	109	(3)
Life Stories	112	(9)
Notes from Underground	121	(4)
Mortifying the Flesh	125	(9)
5 Male Impersonators	134	(33)
The Man who Loved Children	140	(7)
The Politics of the Family	147	(6)
The Conservationist	153	(6)
A Local Habitation	159	(4)
Flight between Worlds	163	(4)
6 Men in Time	167	(55)
The Fatherland of Graham Swift	169	(11)
`The Wean and That': Paternity and Domesticity in The Busconductor Hines	180	(14)
In Search of Lost Languages	194	(12)
The Child in Time	206	(16)
Afterword	222	(3)
Notes	225	(16)
Bibliography	241	(12)
Index	253