An interregnum: masculinity and British fiction at the turn of the century

Katarzyna Więckowska

Abstract


The article offers a reading of the representation of the masculinity crisis at the end of the 20th century in selected British novels. The works by Irvine Welsh, Graham Swift, Niall Griffiths, and Ian McEwan are situated against the development of pro-feminist men’s writing and masculinity studies, as well as the mythopoetic men’s movement and Robert Bly’s bestselling Iron John: A Book About Men (1990). The article foregrounds the sense of an impasse that permeates the novels and that echoes the general feeling of in-betweenness characteristic for the turn of the century.


Keywords


feminism; gender; masculinity; masculinity crisis; British fiction

Full Text:

PDF

References


Archer, Louise. 2004. ’Muslim Brothers, Black Lads, Traditional Asians’: British Muslim Young Men’s Constructions of Race, Religion and Masculinity. Peter F. Murphy, ed. Feminism and Masculinities: 244-254. New York: Oxford University Press.

Bly, Robert. 1990. Iron John: A Book About Men. Reading, MA.: Addison Wesley.

Clare, Anthony. 2000. On Men: Masculinity in Crisis. London: Chatto & Windus.

Faludi, Susan. 2002. Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man. New York: Perennial.

Gramsci, Antonio. 1978. Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci. Eds. Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith. London: Lawrence & Wishart.

Griffiths, Niall. 2002. Kelly+Victor. London: Jonathan Cape.

Hearn, Jeff. 2006. From Masculinities Back to Men: Tracing Diverse Psychological, Social and Political Threads. The Psychology of Women Section Review, 8(1): 38-52. Lyndon, Neil. 1992. No More Sex War: The Failures of Feminism. London: Sinclair-

Stevenson.

McEwan, Ian. 2001. Atonement. London: Jonathan Cape.

McEwan, Ian. 2012. Sweet Tooth. Toronto: Alfred A. Knopf. Ebook.

Men’s Free Press Collective [of Achilles Heel]. 2004. Hopes and Dreams: Creating a Men’s Politics. Peter F. Murphy, ed. Feminism and Masculinities: 80-92. New York: Oxford University Press.

Messner, Michael A. 1997. Politics of Masculinities: Men in Movements. California: Sage.

Parker, Emma. 2003. No Man’s Land: Masculinity and Englishness in Graham Swift’s Last Orders. Daniel Lea and Berthold Schoene, eds. Posting the Male: Masculinities in Post-war and Contemporary British Literature: 89-104. Amsterdam – New York, NY: Rodopi.

Rutherford, Jonathan. 1997. Forever England: Reflections on Race, Masculinity and Empire. London: Lawrence & Wishart.

Sawyer, Jack. 2004. On Male Liberation. Peter F. Murphy, ed. Feminism and Masculinities: 25-27. New York: Oxford University Press.

Schoene-Harwood, Berthold. 1999. Dams Burst: Devolving Gender in Iain Banks’s The Wasp Factory. Ariel: A Review of International English Literature 30:131-148.

Swift, Graham. 1996. Last Orders. London: Picador.

Traister, Bruce. 2000. Academic Viagra: The Rise of American Masculinity Studies. American Quarterly, 52(2): 274-304.

Vermeulen, Timotheus, and Robin van den Akker. 2010. Notes on Metamodernism. Journal of Aesthetics & Culture, Vol. 2, DOI: 10.3402/jac.v2i0.5677.

Welsh, Irvine. 1997. Marabou Stork Nightmares. New York, London: W.W. Norton and Company.

Welsh, Irvine. 1998. Filth. London: Jonathan Cape.

Whannel, Garry. 2002. Media Sport Stars: Masculinities and Moralities. London: Routledge.

Wiegman, Robyn. 2002. Unmaking: Men and Masculinity in Feminist Theory. Judith Kegan Gardiner, ed. Masculinity Studies and Feminist Theory: New Directions: 31- 59. New York: Columbia University Press.

Więckowska, Katarzyna. 2014. Spectres of Men: Masculinity, Crisis, and British Litera- ture. Toruń: Nicolaus Copernicus University Press.


Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


Copyright (c) 2018 Katarzyna Więckowska