Fictions of masculinity : crossing cultures, crossing sexualities

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Title:

Author:

Murphy, Peter Francis.

ISBN:

9780814754979

9780814754986

Publication Information:

New York : New York University Press, c1994.

Physical Description:

xiv, 324 p. ; 24 cm.

Contents:

Introduction: Literature and Masculinity / Peter F. Murphy -- I. Fictions of (American) Masculinities: A Historical Overview. 1. The Last Real Man in America: From Natty Bumppo to Batman / David Leverenz -- II. Crossing Cultures. 2. Barthelme, Freud, and the Killing of Kafka's Father / Peter Schwenger. 3. Gunter Grass's Cat and Mouse and the Phenomenology of Masculinity / Leonard Duroche. 4. Naguib Mahfouz, Men, and the Egyptian Underworld / Miriam Cooke -- III. Crossing Sexualities. 5. Man among Men: David Mamet's Homosocial Order / David Radavich. 6. Male Heterosexuality in John Hawkes's The Passion Artist / Peter F. Murphy. 7. Living Degree Zero: Masculinity and the Threat of Desire in the Roman Noir / Christopher Metress. 8. Fighting Words: The Talk of Men at War in The Red Badge of Courage / Alfred Habegger. 9. The Ambiguous Outlaw: John Rechy and Complicitous Homotextuality / Rafael Perez-Torres.

10. The Lack of Gender in Frank O'Hara's Love Poems to Vincent Warren / Jim Elledge -- IV. Crossing Cultures, Crossing Sexualities. 11. Engendering the Imperial Subject: The (De)construction of (Western) Masculinity in David Henry Hwang's M. Butterfly and Graham Greene's The Quiet American / Suzanne Kehde. 12. J. R. Ackerley and the Ideal Friend / David Bergman. 13. E. M. Forster at the End / Richavd Dellamora. 14. Richard Rodriguez's Poetics of Manhood / Martin A. Danahay.

Subject Term:

Literature, Modern -- 20th century -- History and criticism.

Masculinity in literature.

Added Author:

Murphy, Peter Francis.

Copies:

Available:*

Library	Material Type	Item Barcode	Shelf Number	Copy	Status
Searching... 1:IIEMSA	1:GEN-BOOK	33168025485174	809.93352041 M978F 1994	1	Searching... Unknown

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Summary

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).