Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Wollongong, 2008. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references: p. 292-268.

Thesis (MA)--University of Stellenbosch, 2005. / Bibliography. Also available via the Internet.

The purpose of this study is to examine the presentation of masculinity in selected popular works. The novels under discussion include: Henry ole Kulet’s To Become a Man (1972), Yusuf Dawood’s One Life Too Many (1991), Peter Kimani’s Before the Rooster Crows (2002) and David Maillu’s Man from Machakos (2010). The writers are representative of a diversity of Kenyan ethnicities: Dawood (Asian-African), while the rest comprise Kenyan men of black descent though different ethnicities. The study attempts to interrogate the various strands of masculinity in Kenyan society as presented in the selected works. The study also seeks to investigate how different men negotiate/manifest their masculinity in different settings. It also interrogates factors and trends that shape and influence masculine behaviour in the selected texts. The study also explores the ramifications of various manifestations of masculinity on the family. The study adopts masculinities theory as the theoretical framework. The theory is applied in the interpretation of issues that relate to this study. / Afrikaans and Theory of Literature / D. Litt et Phil. (Theory of literature)

M.A. / The post-apartheid period has seen growing literary interest in issues of gender and sexuality. This dissertation reads literature as a type of cultural history and engages critically with the discursive and epistemological role of fiction within a broader palimpsest of discourses, theories and nomenclatures relating to sexuality. It maps the limitations of existing epistemological hierarchies and argues for the recognition of fiction as an ephemeral and complementary archive of same-sex subjectivities. While fiction can construct and shift signifying regimes, it also engages with the complexities and nuances of individual subjectivities as well as the affective elements of narratives in interesting and important ways. Focussing particularly on K. Sello Duiker’s The Quiet Violence of Dreams (2001), Gerald Kraak’s Ice in the Lungs (2006), and Mark Behr’s Kings of the Water (2009), this dissertation examines the ways in which representations of non-heteronormative sexualities impact on post-transitional literary culture in South Africa. Transition-era texts and discourses tend to serve particular political imperatives that demand the politicisation of identities. This dissertation destabilises the existing taxonomies of sexual identities and foregrounds the fluidity of both sexual desire and individual subjectivities. Furthermore, this dissertation interrogates the signifying regimes and discursive practices with which same-sex intimacies between men are represented. In addition, it interrogates the prevailing frameworks for the study of masculinities and shows how the novels under consideration illustrate alternative ways of conceptualising gender performativity. While there are of course a multiplicity of masculinities, through a close reading of the novels I argue that the performativity of masculinities is produced by the indeterminate, though undeniable, intersections between cultural gender norms and individual agency. This dissertation’s analysis of gender representations identifies masculinities as the site for the interrogation of myriad historical and cultural discourses including those relating to the South African Defence Force, the anti-apartheid movement and post-apartheid Cape Town. Accordingly, I argue that the three post-transitional novels under consideration resist the politics of collective mobilisation and undermine ideologically-sanctioned ‘official’ histories. As both a literary and a cultural history, this dissertation engages not only with the literariness of the novels but also with how they contribute to a broader cultural history of same-sex male subjectivities in South Africa.

Der literaturwissenschaftliche Beitrag von Franziska Lorenz (M. A.), Das hegemoniale Bildungskonzept von Männlichkeit im 19. Jahrhundert – nimmt quellen- und forschungsnah historische und textsortenspezifische Differenzen in den Blick und beschreibt, wie sie in den Geschlechterkonstruktionen männlich produzierter Lexikondiskurse und zwei dramatischer Literatursatiren aus den ‚weiblichen Federn‘ Annette von Droste-Hülshoffs und Elsa von Schabelskys im 19. Jahrhundert verhandelt werden. In thematischer Hinsicht fokussiert er dabei die in den Wissensvermittlungstexten stereotyp ausdifferenzierten ‚Geschlechtscharaktere‘, deren zunehmend repressive und exklusorische Normierungsmacht auf Individuen und Systeme die beiden Komödien, genretypisch und facettenreich, indessen subvertieren und problematisieren. Halten sie dem postulierten hegemonialen Männlichkeitsmodell mit der (literarischen) Wirklichkeit höchst differenter anderer ‚Männlichkeiten‘ doch nicht nur einen satirischen Spiegel vor, sondern opponieren zugleich gegen inhärente misogyne Wertungsstandards von ‚Weiblichkeit‘ und weiblicher Kreativität.

The question of decline in the historiography of seventeenth-century Spain originally included socio-economic analyses that determined the decline of Spain was an economic recession. Eventually, the historiographical debate shifted to include cultural elements of seventeenth-century Spanish society. Gender within the context of decline provides further insight into how the deterioration of the Spanish economy and the deterioration of Spanish political power in Europe affected Spanish self-perception. The prolific Spanish women writers, in addition, featured their points of view on manhood in their works and created a model of masculinity known as virtuous masculinity. They expected Spanish men to perform their masculine duties as protectors and providers both in public and in private. Seventeenth-century decline influenced how women viewed masculinity. Their new model of masculinity was based on ideas that male authors had developed, but went further by emphasizing men treating their wives well.

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This dissertation analyses the violence of patriarchal culture as it is staged in three twentieth century texts: the Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Chronicle of a Death Foretold (1981), the South African novelist Mark Behr's The Smell of Apples (1993) and the American film Night of the Hunter (1954) directed by Charles Laughton. Each of these works focuses on the induction of the boy child into culture and the trauma attendant on this process of accession. The thesis is that if culture is violent then it must follow that damage is done to the developing subject in the process of its construction by the cultural forces that shape masculinity. The theoretical grounding of the analysis is derived from two main sources: Jacques Derrida's account of the violence of culture in Of Grammatology (1976) and the analysis of patriarchy and the Oedipal development of the boy child into manhood found in the work of Freud and Lacan. Derrida is used for his thinking on the inherently violent nature of culture and the way in which cultural discourse is structured through binary dualisms. The three chosen works all critique and dismantle binarist thinking as a move towards imagining a less destructive discursive order. The Oedipal narrative, as a myth which describes and explains the forces shaping the male child in the process of acculturation, exemplifies and illustrates cultural violence: As expounded by Freud and Lacan, the Oedipal myth is one which underpins all three of the chosen works. Derrida, Freud and Lacan have been very usefully mediated by several cultural critics and therefore extensive use is made of commentaries by Kaja Silverman, Frank Krutnik and Madan Sarup. Slavoj Zizek's interpretations of Lacan have also yielded much that is interesting about the nature of the Law of the Father and consequently reference is made to his ideas, principally in Chapter Four.This dissertation analyses the violence of patriarchal culture as it is staged in three twentieth century texts: the Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Chronicle of a Death Foretold (1981), the South African novelist Mark Behr's The Smell of Apples (1993) and the American film Night of the Hunter (1954) directed by Charles Laughton. Each of these works focuses on the induction of the boy child into culture and the trauma attendant on this process of accession. The thesis is that if culture is violent then it must follow that damage is done to the developing subject in the process of its construction by the cultural forces that shape masculinity. The theoretical grounding of the analysis is derived from two main sources: Jacques Derrida's account of the violence of culture in Of Grammatology (1976) and the analysis of patriarchy and the Oedipal development of the boy child into manhood found in the work of Freud and Lacan. Derrida is used for his thinking on the inherently violent nature of culture and the way in which cultural discourse is structured through binary dualisms. The three chosen works all critique and dismantle binarist thinking as a move towards imagining a less destructive discursive order. The Oedipal narrative, as a myth which describes and explains the forces shaping the male child in the process of acculturation, exemplifies and illustrates cultural violence: As expounded by Freud and Lacan, the Oedipal myth is one which underpins all three of the chosen works. Derrida, Freud and Lacan have been very usefully mediated by several cultural critics and therefore extensive use is made of commentaries by Kaja Silverman, Frank Krutnik and Madan Sarup. Slavoj Zizek's interpretations of Lacan have also yielded much that is interesting about the nature of the Law of the Father and consequently reference is made to his ideas, principally in Chapter Four. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2005.

Among the diverse fabric of masculinities that prestigious authors such as Pedro Calderon de la Barca, Tirso de Molina and Agustin Moreto weave into their plots, fashion proves to be a common thread and a particularly useful tool. Thus, as I approach the idea of "Fashionable Masculinities" and investigate a few "macho" and/or not so "macho men" in Early Modern drama I hope to go beyond the traditional interpretations, stereotypes and icons often associated with men---in particular, Spanish men in Golden Age drama. This will be achieved by revisiting typical cases and compared through research and documentation of atypical representations of maleness that could be considered displacements and/or subversions of the social matrix. In effect, this study explores how the male ideal is shaped and judged both by the essence of his personality, as well as his physical appearance (i.e.: clothing, hairstyle, mannerisms, discourse and voice). As such, it becomes evident that masculinity is moulded, influenced, enhanced, exaggerated and even muted as it is subject to the whim of different fashions prevalent at a specific moment in time. Moreover, a multitude of social, cultural, racial and historical factors determine the always changing image of the so called "macho man". / Therefore, in order to explore distinct representations of masculinity I approach three different comedias by three different playwrights while comparing how the main character's masculinity fared in three very important spaces: physical, social and sexual. I focus my attention on Saber del mal y del bien by Calderon. Secondly, Don Gil de las calzas verdes by Tirso and explored El lindo don Diego by Moreto. Each one the these represents a different degree of palatable male identities given this particular social construct.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of North Texas, Aug., 2007. / Title from title page display. Includes bibliographical references.