French Masculinities makes a valuable contribution to gender studies by presenting, for the first time, a comprehensive and critical overview of ideas of how virilité has been imagined in France from the Eighteenth century to the present. Incorporating insights of cultural and social historians as well as specialists in film and literature, this collection approaches masculinities in a complex and interdisciplinary manner that will appeal to a wide range of readers.

Despite its debt to French thought for theoretical constructs, masculinity studies have been dominated by work on English-language texts and contexts. Entre Hommes lays the foundation for French and Francophone masculinity studies in both a cultural and theoretical sense.This ground-breaking volume considers what is meant by 'French' or 'Francophone' masculinities per se and how these identities have or have not changed over time, with essays spanning periods from the Middle Ages to the present. An introduction situates the study of masculinity within the work of recent French thinkers, and essays examine both key writers and recurring cultural images.

As traditional notions of masculinity have been put into question, there have been representational reactions to and articulations of changing masculinities in post-modern culture. Certain contemporary French cultural productions are illustrative of these changing masculinities and this book offers the first comprehensive examination of these manifestations. Acclaimed critic Lawrence Schehr uses analysis of AIDS narratives, mainstream films, popular novels, more mainstream novels, a graphic novel, and rightist polemics to explore the changing meaning of masculinity in French society. French Postmodern Masculinities will appeal to a broad range of researchers and postgraduate students working in French cultural studies, cinema, and twentieth- and twenty-first-century French literature.

In this study of upper-class masculinity from the end of the ancien régime in 1789 to the end of World War I, Robert Nye argues that manhood, masculinity, and male sexuality is, like femininity, a cultural construct, comprising a strict set of heroic ideals and codes of honor which few men have been able to realize in practice. In doing so, Nye destabilizes and historicizes the male body, and incorporates gender into the brand of cultural history inaugurated by Norbert Elias in the 1930s.

The study of masculinities and gender identity in contemporary literature is relatively new and, with each year of this millennium, gains momentum. Indeed, as the women’s movement becomes forceful in developing nations, the question of tolerance to gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transvestites undergoes a similar process. At a time when women refuse to be subjected to war crimes, when they begin entering the workforce and realize the need to support their families independently, and when they refuse to remain in abusive marriages or remain silent in countries, where governments ignore their needs, men and women are questioning the meaning of gender in their culture and often seek alternatives to established gender roles. In some countries, this entails organized demonstrations for additional civil rights, while in others, the expression of sexual freedom remains a question of remaining silent or risking public execution. Thanks to the scholarly commitment of its authors, this book examines the range of masculine expression on three continents: Europe, Africa, and the Americas. In this collection, they write about men’s past and present challenges, male friendships, and male immigrants and outcasts. Paralleling the independence movement of France’s former colonies, the goal of this collection is to continue the expression of freedom toward understanding and tolerance of all variances of sexuality.

Intertextual Masculinity in French Renaissance Literature is an in-depth analysis of normative masculinity in a specific corpus from pre-modern Europe: narrative literature devoted to the subject of adultery and cuckoldry. The text begins with a set of general questions that serve as a conceptual framework for the literary analyses that follow: why were early modern readers so fascinated by the figure of the cuckold? What was his relation to the real world of sexual behavior and gender relations? What effect did he have on the construction of actual masculinities? To respond to these questions, David LaGuardia develops a theoretical approach that is based both on modern critical theory and on close readings of records and documents from the period. Reading early modern legal texts, penance manuals, criminal registers, and exempla collections in relation to the Cent nouvelles nouvelles, Rabelais's Tiers Livre, and Brantôme's Dames galantes, LaGuardia formulates a definition of masculinity in this historical context as a set of intertextual practices that men used to relay and to reinforce their gender identities. By examining legal and literary artifacts from this particular period and culture, this study highlights the extent to which this supposedly normative masculinity was historically contingent and materially conditioned by generic practices.

Published on the occasion of Sartre's Centenary, this book helps to understand the man behind the work, offering a psycho-social analysis of Jean-Paul Sartre with an emphasis on his masculinity. It sets out to contextualize Sartre in terms of his psycho-sexual formation and processes of self-constitution in view of his childhood. The main period under detailed study is 1905-1945, before Sartre became the Sartre. It concentrates on his early childhood, his teenage years in La Rochelle, the years at the Ecole Normale, and the first few years of his adulthood, with specific attention on the war years. An analysis of Sartre's relationships follows, with Simone de Beauvoir and other women and men (including love and sex), before a postscript covering the period 1973-1980. This essay is not a reductive account. It tells the story of Jean-Paul Sartre, from the inside out, so that the achievements of one of the major intellectuals of the 20th Century can be measured against his own internal struggles.