Writing Masculinity in the Later Middle Ages (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780521866378)

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.

Author: Isabel Davis
ISBN-10: 0521866375
ISBN-13: 9780521866378
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Language: English
Published: 03/19/2007
Pages: 240
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.13lbs
Size: 9.13h x 6.49w x 0.80d