Medieval Masculinities: Regarding Men in the Middle Ages ed. by Clare A. Lees with the Assistance Ofthelma Fenster and Jo Ann Mcnamara (original) (raw)

Writing masculinity in the later Middle Ages

2007

Book synopsis: Medieval discourses of masculinity and male sexuality were closely linked to the idea and representation of work as a male responsibility. Isabel Davis identifies a discourse of masculine selfhood which is preoccupied with the ethics of labour and domestic living. She analyses how five major London writers of the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries constructed the male self: William Langland, Thomas Usk, John Gower, Geoffrey Chaucer and Thomas Hoccleve. These literary texts, while they have often been considered for what they say about the feminine role and identity, have rarely been thought of as evidence for masculinity; this study seeks to redress that imbalance. Looking again at the texts themselves, and their cultural contexts, Davis presents a genuinely fresh perspective on ideas about gender, labour and domestic life in medieval Britain.

The Social Organization of Masculinity, by Raewyn Connell

The Social Organization of Masculinity, by CONNELL, Raewyn, 2005

"The task of this chapter is to set out a framework based on contemporary analyses of gender relations. This framework will provide a way of distinguishing types of masculinity, and of understanding the dynamics of change. Defining Masculinity All societies have cultural accounts of gender, but not all have the concept 'masculinity'. In its modern usage the term assumes that one's behaviour results from the type of person one is. That is to say, an unmasculine person would behave differently: being peaceable rather than violent, conciliatory rather than dominating, hardly able to kick a football, uninterested in sexual conquest, and so forth. This conception presupposes a belief in individual difference and personal agency. In that sense it is built on the conception of individuality that developed in early-modern Europe with the growth of colonial empires and capitalist economic relations. But the concept is also inherently relational. 'Masculinity' does not exist except in contrast with 'femininity'. A culture which does not treat women and men as bearers of polarized character types, at least in principle, does not have a concept of masculinity in the sense of modern European/ American culture. Historical research suggests that this was true of European culture itself before the eighteenth century. Women were certainly regarded as different from men, but different in the sense of being incomplete or inferior examples of the same character (for instance, having less of the faculty of reason). Women and men were not seen as bearers of qualitatively different characters; this conception accompanied the bourgeois ideology of 'separate spheres' in the nineteenth century. In both respects our concept of masculinity seems to be a fairly recent historical product, a few hundred years old at most. In speaking of masculinity at all, then, we are 'doing gender' in a culturally specific way. This should be borne in mind with any claim to have discovered transhistorical truths about manhood and the masculine. Definitions of masculinity have mostly taken our cultural standpoint for granted, but have followed different strategies to characterize the type of person who is masculine. Four main strategies have been followed; they are easily distinguished in terms of their logic, though often combined in practice."

Masculinity and the Other: Historical Perspectives

Histories of masculinity have generally examined both social ideologies of masculinity and subjective male identities within frameworks that define them against the feminine. Yet historians and sociologists have increasingly argued that men have been and continue to be defined both socially and subjectively as much by their relations to other men as in relation to women. This collection brings together the work of scholars of masculinities working in a variety of fields, including literature, history and art history, to examine some of the forms of 'otherness' against which ideas of masculinity have been defined throughout history. The collection reflects the current breadth of scholarship relating to the study of masculine alterity. While the subjects addressed are largely historical, the time span covered is broad and the disciplinary approaches to the subject matter are equally wide-ranging. A huge variety of men, masculine behaviours and definitions of masculinity are considered in an exciting and invigorating collection that showcases both established academics and emerging scholars in the field.

'Be a Man': The Construct of Masculinity through Ages

The juxtaposition of reviews of three exceptionally articulate books on masculinity traversing the ancient, medieval and modern periods of India's historical past with an insight on the very changes and continuities of gender relations and studies.

Masculinity. A Miniature How-to Guide for that Notoriously 'Unmarked' Category

in Yearbook of Women's History 40. Living Concepts. 40 Years of Engaging Gender and History (2021) pp. 53-58, 2021

Considering the hard time Dutch gender historians have incorporating the concept of masculinity in their research, this paper is set up as a miniature ‘how-to-guide’. After briefly discussing its notorious ‘unmarked’ character, the inherently plural nature of masculinity is introduced as useful guiding principle. Then some examples of possible methods and their relative merits are given. Meanwhile, eclecticism in one’s methods is also recommended as a working strategy. The essay concludes with a plea not to underestimate the value of contradictory findings and the opportunities they offer for a more advanced analysis of masculinity.

Book ReviewsThe Myth of Masculinity.PleckJoseph H., Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1981, 229 pp., $22.50

Psychology of women quarterly, 1985

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