Pope, Homer, and Manliness

Pope, Homer, and Manliness PDF Author: Carolyn D. Williams
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317694759
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 235

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Book Description
The author here reassesses the concept of ‘masculinity’, and argues that it cannot be seen as an absolute standard, but only as the product of perpetual conflict between competing and unstable models. The argument is sustained by a close reading of the problematic conflict between gendered values in eighteenth-century classical learning. Pope’s Homer ensured the continuation of the tradition of using the Iliad and Odyssey to teach privileged boys how to become more ‘manly’. This book examines this pedagogy in its socio-literary context, and concludes that Pope’s Homer emerges as a relic of the struggle to preserve masculine dignity from the encroachments of feminine values in the text. This knowledge of classical and early modern literature has rarely been brought to bear on gender studies. First published in 1993, it remains a valuable contribution to debates concerning the reception of the Classical tradition.

Pope, Homer, and Manliness

Pope, Homer, and Manliness PDF Author: Carolyn D. Williams
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317694759
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 235

Get Book Here

Book Description
The author here reassesses the concept of ‘masculinity’, and argues that it cannot be seen as an absolute standard, but only as the product of perpetual conflict between competing and unstable models. The argument is sustained by a close reading of the problematic conflict between gendered values in eighteenth-century classical learning. Pope’s Homer ensured the continuation of the tradition of using the Iliad and Odyssey to teach privileged boys how to become more ‘manly’. This book examines this pedagogy in its socio-literary context, and concludes that Pope’s Homer emerges as a relic of the struggle to preserve masculine dignity from the encroachments of feminine values in the text. This knowledge of classical and early modern literature has rarely been brought to bear on gender studies. First published in 1993, it remains a valuable contribution to debates concerning the reception of the Classical tradition.

Defoe’s Writings and Manliness

Defoe’s Writings and Manliness PDF Author: Stephen H. Gregg
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317153464
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
Defoe's Writings and Manliness is a timely intervention in Defoe studies and in the study of masculinity in eighteenth-century literature more generally. Arguing that Defoe's writings insistently returned to the issues of manliness and its contrary, effeminacy, this book reveals how he drew upon a complex and diverse range of discourses through which masculinity was discussed in the period. It is for this reason that this book crosses over and moves between modern paradigms for the analysis of eighteenth-century masculinity to assess Defoe's men. A combination of Defoe's clarity of vision, a spirit of contrariness and a streak of moral didacticism resulted in an idiosyncratic and restless testing of the forces surrounding his period's ideas of manliness. Defoe's men are men, but they are never unproblematically so: they display a contrariness which indicates that a failure of manliness is never very far away.

The Image of Manhood in Early Modern Literature

The Image of Manhood in Early Modern Literature PDF Author: Andrew P. Williams
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0313030189
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 213

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Book Description
The numerous and multifaceted ways in which masculinities emerge and are expressed within cultures prompt a broad ranging examination and reconsideration of what it means to be a man. Within the study of masculinity, the early modern period stands between the Renaissance, when conceptions of manhood were primarily dominated by chivalric and humanistic traditions, and the latter half of the 18th century, which marked the beginnings of modern conceptions of masculine identity. But rather than a transitional period, the early modern era was a key moment in the evolutionary dynamics of masculine representation. Political forces, such as the Puritan revolution, the Restoration, and the shift in power from the courtier class to the growing middle class forced a reconsideration of the masculine ideal in light of the experiences of the masses. At the same time, the emergence of print culture provided a means of transmitting the new masculine ideal, and literature of the period reflected the changing notions of masculinity. The chapters in this volume explore the various strategies used by early modern writers to represent masculinity. Together, the expert contributors offer a broad perspective on the social and political dynamics of early modern masculine identity. Included are chapters on such writers as Thomas Carew, Andrew Marvell, Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, John Dryden, Daniel Defoe, and Samuel Richardson. Though incorporating a variety of critical approaches, the contributors all explore the inherent anxiety associated with masculinity and its representation. The chapters demonstrate how significant literary texts of the period provided not only idealized images of early modern manhood but also contesting ones. By focusing on the literary, historical, and social dynamics which construct cultural perceptions of masculinity, this volume ultimately illustrates the literary representation of manhood in the early modern period to be a dynamic and evolving process which often challenged Western notions of what it means to be a man.

Opera and Politics in Queen Anne's Britain, 1705-1714

Opera and Politics in Queen Anne's Britain, 1705-1714 PDF Author: Thomas McGeary
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 1783277157
Category : Great Britain
Languages : en
Pages : 445

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Book Description
Explores the political meanings that Italian opera - its composers, agents and institutions - had for audiences in eighteenth-century Britain.

Men Beyond Desire

Men Beyond Desire PDF Author: David Greven
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1403977119
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 299

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Book Description
This book explores the construction of male sexuality in nineteenth-century American literature and comes up with some startling findings. Far from desiring heterosexual sex and wishing to bond with other men through fraternity, the male protagonists of classic American literature mainly want to be left alone. Greven makes the claim that American men, eschewing both marriage and male friendship, strive to remain emotionally and sexually inviolate. Examining the work of traditional authors - Hawthorne, Poe, Melville, Cooper, Irving, Stowe - Greven discovers highly untraditional and transgressive representations of desire and sexuality. Objects of desire from both women and other men, the inviolate males discussed in this study overturn established gendered and sexual categories, just as this study overturns archetypal assumptions about American manhood and American literature.

Constructions of Masculinity in British Literature from the Middle Ages to the Present

Constructions of Masculinity in British Literature from the Middle Ages to the Present PDF Author: S. Horlacher
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 113701587X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 445

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Book Description
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.

British Masculinity in the 'Gentleman’s Magazine', 1731 to 1815

British Masculinity in the 'Gentleman’s Magazine', 1731 to 1815 PDF Author: Gillian Williamson
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137542330
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 399

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Book Description
The Gentleman's Magazine was the leading eighteenth-century periodical. By integrating the magazine's history, readers and contents this study shows how 'gentlemanliness' was reshaped to accommodate their social and political ambitions.

Heretical Hellenism

Heretical Hellenism PDF Author: Shanyn Fiske
Publisher: Ohio University Press
ISBN: 0821418173
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
Heretical Hellenism examines sources such as theater history and popular journals to uncover the ways women acquired knowledge of Greek literature, history, and philosophy and challenged traditional humanist assumptions about the uniformity of classical knowledge and about women's place in literary history.

The Feminization Debate in Eighteenth-Century England

The Feminization Debate in Eighteenth-Century England PDF Author: E. Clery
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230509045
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 245

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Book Description
In the Eighteenth-century, critics of capitalism denounced the growth of luxury and effeminacy; supporters applauded the increase of refinement and the improved status of women. This pioneering study explores the way the association of commerce and femininity permeated cultural production. It looks at the first use of a female author as an icon of modernity in the Athenian Mercury , and reappraises works by Elizabeth Singer Rowe, Mandeville, Defoe, Pope and Elizabeth Carter. Samuel Richardson's novels represent the culmination of the English debate, while contemporary essays by David Hume move towards a fully-fledged enlightenment theory of feminization.

Cultural Constructions of Madness in Eighteenth-Century Writing

Cultural Constructions of Madness in Eighteenth-Century Writing PDF Author: A. Ingram
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230510892
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
Cultural Constructions of Madness in the Eighteenth Century deals with the (mis)representation of insanity through a substantial range of literary forms and figures from across the eighteenth century and beyond. Chapters cover the representation, distortion, sentimentalization and elevation of insanity, and such associated issues as gender, personal identity, and performance, in some of the best, as well as some of the least, known writers of the period. A selection of visual material, including works by Hogarth, Rowlandson, and Gillray, is also discussed. While primarily adopting a literary focus, the work is informed throughout by an alertness to significant issues of medical and psychiatric history.