Masculinity is a set of meanings, and also an aspect of male identity. Understanding masculinity in history, therefore, requires attention to culture and psychology. The concept of a "crisis of masculinity" cannot address these dimensions sufficiently and is of little use to the historian. / This analysis of evidence from late medieval England begins with the social world. Legal records show men defending, and therefore defining, masculine identity through interaction among male peers and with women. Defamation suits suggest a fifteenth-century identification of masculinity with "trueness": an uncomplicated, open honesty. A "true man," in late medieval England, was not just an honest man, but a real man. / Social masculinity constituted honest fairness, permitting stable social relations between men. Transparent honesty, good management of the household ("husbandry"), and self-command preserved males' social substance, their metaphoric embodiment represented tangibly by money and property. Lawsuits and personal letters show how masculine social identity took shape through competition and cooperation with other men. "Power," "dominance" and self-fulfilment were less important than sustaining this network of relations. / Men's relations with women are best understood within this homosocial dynamic. Men's adultery trespassed on other males' substance, while women's adultery indicated poor management of one's own. Sexual slander against men could injure their social identity, but was unlikely to demolish it, as it would for a woman. The celibate minority of men shared these concerns. / Medical texts, late medieval men's clothing, satirical poems, and courtesy texts prescribing self-control show that the male body provided important meanings (phallic and otherwise), through failure, inadequacy or excess as often as not. Sexual activity, and other uses of the body, might be managed differently as self-restraining or self-indulgent discourses of masculinity demanded. / A psychoanalytic reading of medieval romances reveals fantasized solutions to the problem of males' desire for feminine and masculine objects. Romance literature displays a narcissistic subjectivity created in defensive fantasies of disconnection. Such features derive from a culture demanding incessant social self-presentation of its men, which permitted very little in daily life to be kept from the scrutiny of others.

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This thesis uses the Victorian ideology of chivalric manlines to explain the class-oriented army hierarchy developed by volunteer soldiers from northern England during the Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902. Newspaper reports, advertising, and popular fiction reveal a public mythology of imperial manliness and neo-chivalric ideals that was transferred onto civilian volunteers, creating an ideal warrior that satisfied a thirst for honour. This mythology created a world view in which northern communities, once supporters of the burgeoning peace movement, became committed supporters of parochial units of volunteer soldiers that fought in the newly expanded army. Soldiers' letters and diaries reveal that ingrained ideals of manliness and chivalry led to class-differentiated hierarchies within the army that mirrored those in civilian life. Contrary to the conclusions of some current historians, the Regular soldier remained in his traditional place at the bottom of the army structure, so that "the more things change, the more they remain the same." / vi, 138 leaves ; 29 cm.

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