Shakespeare On Masculinity

Reviews Shakespeare's view of masculinity through The Tempest, Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth and others.

Oxford Shakespeare Topics (General Editors Peter Holland and Stanley Wells) provide students, teachers, and interested readers with short books on important aspects of Shakespeare criticism and scholarship, including some general anthologies relating to Shakespeare. Richard III, Romeo, Prince Harry, Malvolio, Hamlet, Lear, Antony, Coriolanus, Prospero: Shakespeare's roster of male protagonists is astonishingly various. Shakespeare and Masculinity juxtaposes these memorable characters with the medical beliefs, ethical ideals, and social realities that shaped masculine identity for Shakespeare, as for his fellow actors and their audiences. At the same time it explores the process of male self-definition against various sorts of 'others' - women, foreigners, social inferiors, sodomites. Reflecting the truth that the plays' principal existence is in the live theatre, the book finishes with a transhistorical, multicultural survey of how masculinity has been performed in productions of Shakespeare's plays - in France, Germany, Hungary, Iraq, Japan, and elsewhere - and with a challenge to imagine masculinity in fuller and more satisfying ways.

The book advances the idea that American, Southern, white, planter class authors have appropriated models and modes of masculinity from William Shakespeare. Keener traces the history of this appropriation and its attendant masculinities from authors as early as William Gilmore Simms, through Thomas Nelson Page and Thomas Dixon, to William Faulkner.

Maria Howell's, Manhood and Masculine Identity in William Shakespeare's The Tragedy of Macbeth, is an important and compelling scholarly work which seeks to examine the sixteenth century's greatest concern, echoed by Hamlet himself, "What is a man?" In an attempt to analyze the concept of manhood in Macbeth, Howell explores the contradictions and ambiguities that underlie heroic notions of masculinity dramatized throughout the play. From Lady Macbeth's capacity to control and destroy Macbeth's masculine identity, to Macbeth himself, who corrupts his military prowess to become a ruthless and murderous tyrant, Howell demonstrates that heroic notions of masculinity not only reinforce masculine power and authority, paradoxically, these ideals are also the source of man's disempowerment and destruction. Howell argues that in an attempt to attain a higher principle, the means (violence and destruction) and the ends (justice and peace) become fused and indistinguishable, so that those values that inform man's actions for good no longer provide moral clarity. Howell's poignant and timely analysis of manhood and masculine identity in Shakespeare's Macbeth will no doubt resonate with readers today.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1981.

Examination Thesis from the year 2007 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 2,0, University of Potsdam (Institut f r Anglistik und Amerikanistik), 50 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: The title of this paper is "The Construction of Femininity and Masculinity in Shakespeare s Macbeth". As this title suggests, I analyzed how Shakespeare construes female and male identity in Macbeth. As in many Shakespearean dramas the play starts with the destruction of order leading up to a crisis and ending in the restoration of order at the end of the play (Gelfert 32). The political order that is destroyed in the course of the play is King Duncan s natural and fair order which appreciates a unique set of masculine and feminine values. Macbeth murders King Duncan in order to usurp his throne. Macbeth s reign turns Duncan s order into chaos and moral order cannot return to Scotland until the tyrant ruler Macbeth is defeated by troops who fight for the restoration of Duncan s order, through the coronation of his son Malcolm. This essay deals with the question of how Shakespeare shapes female and male characters. As a matter of fact, female and male characters are ultimately involved in the destruction and restoration of Scotland. This involves questions such as: Which historical concepts does Shakespeare use to construe his male and female characters? Does he construe "typical" gender roles? And what happens when gender boundaries are crossed, when men develop feminine traits and women male ones? With special regard to the marriage of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, I also analyzed the interaction between the genders. In the course of my analysis, I used the term "gender", originating from Anglo-American feminist discourse, meaning "the social, cultural, and psychological meaning imposed upon biological sexual identity" (Showalter 1-2). Interpreting femininity and masculinity as "gender" constructions allows a more thorough an

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1981.

Don’t trust your instincts—there is a better path to becoming a better man. It’s no secret: today’s men face a dilemma. Our culture tells them that their instincts are either toxic or salvific. Men are left with only two options: deconstruct and forfeit masculine identity or embrace it with wild abandon. They’re left to decide between ignoring their instincts or indulging them. Neither approach helps them actually understand their own masculine experiences nor how those experiences can lead them to become better men of God. The Bible doesn’t shy away from the reality of masculine instincts nor all of the ways those instincts can lead to destruction. Examining the lives of five men of the Bible, The 5 Masculine Instincts shows that these men aren’t masculine role models or heroes but are men who wrestled with their own desires and, by faith, matured them into something better. Through this book you’ll discover your own instincts are neither curse nor virtue. They are the experiences by which you develop a new and better instinct—an instinct of faith. By exploring sarcasm, adventure, ambition, reputation, and apathy, The 5 Masculine Instincts shows you how to better understand yourself and how your own instincts can be matured into something better. This is the path by which we become better men.