Images of Masculinity in Fantasy Fiction

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Year:
Pages:296
ISBN:0-7734-6754-8
978-0-7734-6754-5
Price:$199.95 + shipping
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Since the challenge of feminism to the predominant patriarchal outlook on the world, modern man feels displaced, and a plaintive note has entered the discourse on gender. The problem is not only discussed on an academic level but has become part of popular culture. Role models for men have become as varied as they have been for women since the emergence of feminism. These essays deal with the combined topic of male gender roles and the fantasy genre which allows a particularly wide scope for the investigation of roles.

Table of Contents

Table of contents:
Foreword
Preface: Another Key to Bluebeard’s Chamber: Ideal and Fundamentalist Masculinity in the Literature of Fantasy (Nicholas Ruddick)
Part I. The Foundations of Fantasy
The Hero’s Quest Begins
· Masculinity and Fantasy (Travel) Literature (Amy Lee)
The Body of the Hero
· ‘Diaphaneitè’: The Transparent Body of the Fin de Siècle Fantasy-Formation (Jan B. Gordon)
Part II. Epic Fantasies
The Making of the Hero
· “Boy!” – Male Adolescence in Contemporary Fantasy Novels (Ulrike Horstmann)
· The Return of the Knight? – Heroic Fantasy and the Romance Tradition
The Hero and the Antihero
· What Do Women Want? The Positive Male in Fantasy Fiction by Female Authors (Janice C. Crosby)
· King Arthur of Britain in the Nineties: Just Like a Man (Ulrike Borgmann)
· Textual Surveillance of Masculinity: Stephen R. Donaldson’s Redefinition of Heroic Masculinity in The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever (Margaret Hammit-McDonald)
The Hero and the Other
· Alternative Masculinities and the “Dominion of Men” in The Lord of the Rings (John Miller)
· “Revenge and Recovery”: High Fantasy, Imperialism and the White Male Reader (Noelle Bowles)
Part III: This World and Beyond
The (Un)Making of the Hero
· Men, Myth and Monsters: Masculine Initiation in Barker, King, and Straub (Andrew P. Williams)
· The crucified hero: On Ronald Wright’s Novel A Scientific Romance (Martina Stange)
Beyond Heroism: Shifting Gendered Identities
· “The Prolongation of a Dream”: The Search for Masculinity in Julien Green’s Si j’étais vous…(Thomas J. D. Armbrecht)
Index

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