Writing Masculinities: Male Narratives In Twentieth-Century

Writing Masculinities: Male Narratives in Twentieth-Century Fiction by Ben Knights; Men of
Letters, Writing Lives: Masculinity and Literary Auto/Biography in the Late Victorian Period by Trev Lynn Broughton
Review by: James Eli Adams
Albion: A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies, Vol. 33, No. 1 (Spring, 2001), pp.
154-157
Published by: The North American Conference on British Studies
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4053100 .
Accessed: 20/01/2014 03:51
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Ben Knights's WritingMasculinities bears witness to this pattern.Knights's approach connects a broadlysocial constructionist emphasisto what he calls "a performative theory of knowledge and identity," in which narrativesare understood as "scripts for social encounters" (pp. 15-16), and "reflexiveor estrangedmasculinereading"(p. 3) may prompt new forms of behavior.This helpful emphasison the social dynamicsof readingis blunted, however, by a largely ahistoricalunderstanding masculinity,which abstractsgendered of identity from any particularsociety. Despite the focus on twentieth-centurytexts and repeated disavowals of essentialism, Knights cannot shake the familiar archetypes:"the narrative treatment masculinity" of encodes fantasiesof radicalautonomy,understood most This content downloaded from 133.5.128.242 on Mon, 20 Jan 2014 03:51:56 AM
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