Spectres of men. Masculinity, Crisis and British Literature

Spectres of Men: Masculinity, Crisis and British Literature offers an analysis of the various ways in which hegemonic masculinity has been constructed, contested, and preserved in selected works of British literature from the Middle Ages to the early twenty-first century. The dominant image of manhood that prevails at a given time is examined on the basis of male-authored fiction and a selection of political, philosophical, social, and critical writings by men. By focusing on works by and about men, this book traces the changing connections between masculinity and such concepts as heroic labour or literary production, and describes some of the processes of othering that have been crucial to the formation of the successive models of manhood. A key element in these processes is the figure of the spectre, whose re-appearance disturbs the linearity of time and history, but also makes their movement possible since it is only by recognising the spectre as an effective component of the present that the new, always harboured in the old, may begin.

CONTENT
INTRODUCTION / 7

CHAPTER ONE
BINDING: FROM THE ANGLO-SAXON PERIOD TO THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
Warriors and Knights / 25
Gendering Texts, Lands, and Bodies / 35
Melancholy and the Birth of the Modern Male Subject / 46
Fantasies of Disintegration and Innocence / 58

CHAPTER TWO
BONDING: THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
Effeminacy and Misogyny / 67
Men and the Novel / 75
Sentimental Men / 87
The Gothic / 91

CHAPTER THREE
LABOURING: THE FIRST HALF OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
Romantic Nature and Heroes / 101
Machines and Manly Work / 109
Arts of the Flesh / 121

CHAPTER FOUR
CODIFYING: THE SECOND HALF OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
The Empire and Adventures by Men / 133
Imperial Romances / 140
Male Madness, or the English Malady / 151      
Manliness and Art / 160
The Fin-de-siecle Masculinity Crisis / 165

CHAPTER FIVE
STRUGGLING: THE TWO WORLD WARS
The First World War / 175
Re-constructions I: Brokenness / 183
A Communion of Men / 189
The Second World War / 198
Re-constructions II: Anger / 208

CHAPTER SIX
DISSOLVING: THE SECOND HALF OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY AND BEYOND
Youth and Class / 221
Myths of Men / 231
Masculinity in Decline / 236
A “Victorian” Turn / 244
The Beauty of Dissolution / 257

CONCLUSION / 277
REFERENCES / 285
INDEX / 311

Katarzyna Więckowska