Interrogating postmodern masculinities: Gender and identity in the fiction of Graham Swift, Roddy Doyle, James Kelman, and Martin Amis
Abstract
This project analyzes a selection of late twentieth-century works by prominent British, Irish, and Scottish authors—including Graham Swift, Roddy Doyle, James Kelman, and Martin Amis—in order to discuss the ways in which the cultural and economic transformations that occurred in the concluding decades of the twentieth-century affected traditional definitions of masculinity and the lives of men attempting to articulate coherent narratives of masculine selfhood amidst and in response to these larger changes. Drawing upon the principles of feminist, cultural materialist, and post-structuralist criticism, this study provides readings of the diverse crises experienced by men throughout Britain, Ireland, and Scotland, suggesting that these local crises are symptomatic of a general crisis of masculinity the era witnessed. Within each of its four author-specific chapters, this study addresses the pervasive anxieties affecting a generation of men struggling to understand the masculinities they stand to inherit, masculinities that have been rendered painfully incoherent and inaccessible as a result of larger socioeconomic transformations that occurred throughout the second half of the twentieth century.
Subject Area
British and Irish literature|Gender studies
Recommended Citation
Miller, Theodore Alex, "Interrogating postmodern masculinities: Gender and identity in the fiction of Graham Swift, Roddy Doyle, James Kelman, and Martin Amis" (2013). ETD Collection for Fordham University. AAI3564930.
https://research.library.fordham.edu/dissertations/AAI3564930
