Male Mythologies: John Fowles and Masculinity - Softcover

Woodcock, Bruce

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1492984841 ISBN 13: 9781492984849

Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 1984

Synopsis

John Fowles is one of the most significant British novelists of the second half of the twentieth century, exploring the possibilities and limits of individual freedom in narratives which challenge, startle and entertain with their virtuosity. Influenced by existentialism and a newly-emergent wave of feminism, his depictions of men, male power and masculinity expose the inherrent contradictions lived out not just by his characters, but also himself as a male novelist. While laying bare masculinity as a social and cultural construct, Fowles also dramatises his own contradictory status as part of the problem he is analysing. He both deconstructs and reconstructs male mythologies. First published in 1984, this pioneering and controversial study examines Fowles's works in the context of newly-emergent discussions about masculinity. It lays claim to being the first study of the depiction of masculinity in fiction, as well as one of the earliest full-length studies of Fowles. The novels discussed are: 'The Collector', 'The Magus', 'The French Lieutenant's Woman', 'Daniel Martin', Mantissa', and a more recent essay on 'A Maggot' is included for the sake of completion. The study also includes coverage of gender and masculinity theory, as well as Fowles's essays and interviews. Fowles was candid about the psychoanalytical origins of his fictional obsession with mysterious women figures, and he was equally direct in tracing his own critical awareness of the 'limits of masculinity', to use Andrew Tolson's phrase, back to his own early experiences in public school. From these roots comes his dissection of the experience of being a man, with inevitably contradictory results. In 'The Collector' Fowles virtually invents the genre of the serial killer crime novel: it appeared in 1963, three years after Michael Powell's equally disturbing foray into the genre in 'Peeping Tom'. Fowles's central character, Frederick Clegg, is a collector whose obsession with butterflies mutates into an

About this title

About the Author:

Bruce Woodcock worked as a Lecturer and then Senior Lecturer in the English Department at the University of Hull between 1973 and 2013 when he retired. He graduated from Leicester University with First Class Honours in English (1969), and his Ph.D., 'Poetic Fiction: A Study in Representation' (Leicester, 1974), was a comparison of the experimental fictional strategies of D. H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf. Before arriving in Hull he taught for a year at Lancaster University. He has published three critical books: Male Mythologies: John Fowles and Masculinity (Harvester 1984 - to be republished by Avenues Books, Hull via Create Space/Amazon in 2015), Combative Styles: Romantic Writing and Ideology (University of Hull Press, 1994; with John Coates - to be republished by Avenues Books, Hull via Create Space/Amazon in 2015) and Peter Carey (Manchester University Press, 1996; 2nd edition 2003). He has edited The Selected Poems of William Blake (Wordsworth Poetry Library, 2000) and The Selected Poetry and Prose of Shelley (Wordsworth Poetry Library, 2002). He has also published two collections of poetry: Hunting Mushrooms: Poems 1978-87, Saying Goodbye in Thailand: Poems 1988-97 (both Avenues Books, Hull, 2013; available via Amazon). He has been in a number of Hull bands including The Hitmen, Red Stripe, Desmond and the Decorators, Hermann and the Wailers, Brave Soul, and The Lounge Lizards. He currently plays keyboard in the jazz combo Spooky. He is working on a new collection of poems as well as collecting together his essays in two volumes, Unsettling Illusions: Essays on Literature and Film and The Poet as Heretic: Essays on Poetry and Poets (both Avenues Books, Hull, 2014/5; available via Amazon). He also writes the website ‘Bruce Woodcock Boxer’, dedicated to his father, the British heavyweight boxing champion. He lives in the Avenues, the Greenwich Village of Hull, with his wife Les Garry, who is a psychotherapist and counsellor.

About this edition

• Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
• Publication date: 1984
• ISBN 10: 1492984841
• ISBN 13: 9781492984849
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 190