At the beginning of the twentieth century, men occupied a contested and transitional space in British society. The effects of the women's movement, the Great War, and industrialization changed their life at home, at work, and at their places of recreation. This dissertation examines how the British male writers E.M. Forster, D.H. Lawrence, and George Orwell depict this "crisis of masculinity" and its effect on the male population. I argue that one of the ways the writers convey their understanding of the changing gender codes and the ways in which men were attempting to manage the adjustments to their daily lives is through the description and purpose that they attach to masculine spaces. These three threshold writers occupy an important place in the canon of British modern literature. They all are a part of a masculine literary tradition that privileges male bonding and additionally rituals that seek to reinforce and carry on the patriarchal narrative of men to distinguish between homosocial male bonding and patriarchal privilege (which is heterosexually based). While Forster demonstrates the gender tension between men and women in the exclusive masculine spaces of the text, Lawrence characterizes masculine private space as a site for healing and revitalization for men after the war, and Orwell describes underground male spaces as sites where men can prove their masculinity by enduring intense suffering from pain that is inflicted by the work that they perform. In each chapter, I demonstrate that understanding masculine spaces provides a more complete understanding of each writer's masculine paradigm in literature and to some extent gives us a new way of thinking about the author and his own gender insecurities. Whether it is the swimming hole or the automobile, the smoking room or the dining room, the battlefield war trench or the coal mine, the domestic and public spaces of male life are under siege in the modern era, according to Forster, Lawrence, and Orwell. In order to preserve and sustain the rites and traditions that are upheld in those settings, the writers remind readers about the genealogy of men that reinforces the necessity of male space in hopes of preserving it for future generations.

Dissertation--Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf, 2007. / Bibliogr. p. 222-230.

Texte remanié de: Dissertation--Philosophische Fakultät--Würzburg--Universität, 2004.

Reproduction de : Thèse de doctorat : Biologie de la reproduction : Clermont Ferrand 1 : 2009. / Titre provenant de l'écran-titre. Bibliogr. f. 142-168.

Irish male identity in James Joyce’s and Samuel Beckett’s novels shows evidence of abjection. The oppressive natures of the Church and State in Ireland contribute to abjection in some Irish men. Furthermore, the state of abject being can lead to masochistic practices. According to Julia Kristeva, abjection translates into a .conceptual space. that has its roots in the Freudian Oedipal complex. Kristeva, following Lacan, also points to the connection between abjection and language. Joyce.s character Stephen Dedalus and Beckett.s Molloy/Moran both utilize this conceptual space and language in the narrative provides clues to their abject states. Joyce.s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Ulysses show Stephen.s abjection through his feelings of separation from his fellow citizens as well as his status as an Irish Catholic. Like Stephen, Beckett.s protagonist Molloy/Moran endures abjection in terms of separation from the mother. Nevertheless, abjection by an oppressive social construct such as nationalism or religion is not as evident in Molloy. Although Beckett is an Irish author and Ireland is evident in the novel, Molloy/Moran is a universal character. He is abject by his own design . what Kristeva calls .self abjection. . in order to complete the search for the mother. Molloy/Moran.s search is also a search for the self as he reconciles with approaching death. This is similar to Stephen.s self-abjection but Stephen abjects himself in order to separate himself from his fellow Irishmen. Stephen.s concerns with death take on different ramifications, as Stephen is not at the same point in his life as Molloy/Moran. Death, for Stephen, is his mother.s death and the oppressive guilt she has instilled in him by her admonitions to repent. Masochism is a response to abjection. The age of modernism influenced Joyce.s writing, just as the shift from high modernism to postmodernism influenced Beckett.s. The Irish response to the changes attendant with modernization, both at the fin -de-siécle for Joyce and in the post- World War II years when Beckett wrote, is evident in Stephen Dedalus and Molloy/Moran. According to Suzanne R. Stewart, the turn of the century brought changes in culture through advertising and the advent of consumer capitalism and the bourgeois masculine status quo was threatened. Stewart argues that masochism is partly a masculine response to these changes. I argue that Stephen and Molloy/Moran reflect that response. The result of deferring or suspending either confrontation or resolution is pleasure, or jouissance as the term is used by Jacques Lacan and Julia Kristeva. Neither Joyce nor Beckett makes clear whether Stephen or Molloy/Moran achieve jouissance, effectively leaving the reader suspended, without resolution to the characters. stories. Abjection and masochism link Stephen and Molloy/Moran as symbols of unaccommodated man and are remarkable in that they reflect not only an Irish masculine identity but also a universal masculine identity at both the turn of the century and post- World War II.

The purpose of this study is to analyze picture books from a gender perspective. The books are found in a book box that the libraries send out to preschools. This study is based on the following questions: How are boys and girls portrayed in picture books? Do the picture books encourage or discourage the principles of equality found in the Curriculum for the Pre-School and the equality work conducted in the preschools? I performed a qualitative text and picture analysis of 12 picture books. I used Maria Nikolajeva and Kajsa Wahlströms schedule of typical masculine and feminine qualities and activities when analysing the picture books. I reached the conclusion that in the vast majority of the books boys and girls are portrayed with qualities that are both typical masculine and feminine. Only a few books in the book box portray the boys and girls characters in a stereotype manner. Hence, as a conclusion, the analyzed picture books discourage the traditional stereotype gender patterns and therefore encourage the principles of equality as described in the Curriculum for the Pres-School.

The gay male community has traditionally been a marginalized population struggling for acceptance within the larger international frame. However since the development of gay magazine publications in the 1990s images of the gay male have been more widely spread throughout mainstream society. This study explores how race, age, body image, and sexuality are stereotyped to represent one standard image of the gay male as found in Western gay magazine publications. This is a quantitative media analysis, examining images, covers and advertisements in gay male magazines over a period of four years. By engaging in relevant theoretical discourses, empirical evidence, and scholarly research, this study critically analyzes how the gay identity is mediated by both the mainstream and gay publications. Results from the analysis points to wide spread discrimination within gay publications targeted at all gay minorities, which could have detrimental effects on the gay community.

Following is a study of fathers 'experiences of balance between work and home life. The method the researchers used was based on qualitative interviews aimed at describing father’s own experiences and values, which affects them. The researchers chose to specifically study situations where the fathers were faced with situations where their children needed to be cared for in the home because of a cold or similar illness since this is a situation that directly affects the time that was meant for work, but now risk being moved to areas of life that the researchers define as home life. This is to see whether the respondents felt that this situation affected the balance between work- and home life. The result shows that there are many values of masculinity and fatherhood that influence the respondents when they create their identities. It is those values that come into conflict, as different roles floats into other areas of life, which results in an imbalance between work- and home life. This means that fathers experience distress as they try to compensate by working from home or at other times. It also creates a conflict in ideal gender-equal relationships in which men and women in theory, try to act on values of gender-equality but in practice, solve these situation based on traditional gender patterns.

Thèses (M.A.)--Université de Sherbrooke (Canada), 2002. / Titre de l'écran-titre (visionné le 20 juin 2006). Publié aussi en version papier.

Texte remanié de: T. doct.--Université de Stockholm, 1986.