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An in-depth analysis into the construction of male identity as well as a unique and comprehensive historical overview of how masculinity has been constructed in British literature from the Middle Ages to the present. This book is an important contribution to the emerging field of masculinity studies.

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Table of Contents PART I: THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK Charting the Field of Masculinity Studies: Towards a Literary History of Masculinities; Prof. Dr. S.Horlacher The Construction of the Construction of Masculinities; Prof. Dr. H.Brod Masculinity Inside Out: The Biopolitical Lessons of Transgender and Intersex Studies; Prof. Dr. K.Floyd PART II: LITERATURE FROM THE MIDDLE AGES TO THE 19TH-CENTURY Wrestling in the Moonlight: The Politics of Masculinity in the Middle English Popular Romance Gamelyn; Prof. Dr. A.J.Johnston ´Merit, Justice, Gratitude, Duty, Fidelity´: Images of Masculinity in Autobiographies of Early Modern English Gentlewomen and Aristocrats; Prof. Dr. G.Rippl The ´Crisis´ of Masculinity in Seventeenth-Century England; Prof. Dr. M.Kimmel Manliness and Its Anxieties: Shaftesbury and Swift; Dr. I.K.Augustan Fortified Masculinity: Daniel Defoe´s Robinson Crusoe as a Literary Emblem of Western Male Identity; Prof. Dr. L.Volkmann The Invisible Center: Conceptions of Masculinity in Victorian Fiction - Realist, Crime, Detective and Gothic; Prof. Dr. R.Schneider The Props of Masculinity in Late Victorian Adventure Fiction; Prof. Dr. S.Scholz & N.Dropmann, M.A. PART III: 20TH- AND 21ST-CENTURY LITERATURE A Man Could Stand Up: Masculinities and the Great War; Prof. Dr. S.Mergenthal Baffled Hopes and Bad Habits: Men, Marriage and Conformity in Queer Theory and Gay Representation; Prof. Dr. B.Schoene Cultural Hybridity and Fluid Masculinities in the Postcolonial Metropolis: Individualized Gender Identities in Hanif Kureishi´s The Buddha of Suburbia and The Black Album; Prof. Dr. M.Winkgens Who Is That Man? Lad Trouble in High Fidelity, The Best a Man Can Get and White City Blue; Dr. A.Ochsner List of Contributors Index

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"[A] very enjoyable and wide-ranging collection . . . [These essays] offer refreshing and, more often than not, original perspectives on a broad range of struggles for masculine identity." - Anglia

"Constructions of Masculinity in British Literature from the Middle Ages to the Present has vast ambitions . . . Altogether, the collection succeeds in providing a survey of historical literary masculinities." - Anglistik

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STEFAN HORLACHER Professor of English Literature and Chair of the English Department at Dresden University of Technology, Germany.

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