A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, in fulfilment of the requirements of degree of Doctor of Philosophy Johannesburg, 2015 / The ways in which we have come to know the world through expressions and performances of dominant versions of masculine and feminine gendered identities is challenged, refracted and altered on a daily basis through social interactions. This work situates itself within the various spheres of dominant masculinity production such as neo-traditional African cultural practices, sexuality, the family unit, race and class, as well as other contributory factors such as migration and lack of social advancement opportunities. Through the use of the novelistic genre, this work examines how contemporary black South African novels of English expression engage with the production of dominant masculinity, in order to critique the taken-for-granted access by dominant men to social power over other men, women and children. Not only does this study concern itself with the extent to which core elements of dominant masculinities are being transformed, it tracks transformation in literary figurations of men, and is interested in the alternative masculine identities that these novels proffer. This works’ search for alternative identities is predicated on the primacy of a symbiotic relationship between strategies of self re-presentation, personal agency and the power of social structures. This study concludes that the central codes of contemporary dominant black masculinities are forced to change because their legitimising narratives are put under scrutiny. Fluctuating social, political and economic factors also mediate their constant breakdown and recreation. However, the development of the alternative gendered identities imagined in these novels is thwarted by the prevailing socio-cultural practices of the contemporary era.

published_or_final_version / abstract / Comparative Literature / Master / Master of Philosophy

This study examines the ways that Dante uses concepts of the masculine in his early work to offer an analysis of the masculine ideals which lie at the basis of Dante's construction of himself as an author in the lyric poems and in his discussions of Latin and Italian. I describe ideals and conceptions of masculinity current in Dante's era, particularly the socially-adjudged behaviors and attitudes that underpin honor-culture, in order to delineate the ways in which Dante uses these conventions in lyric poems to make the poems themselves entries in an honor exchange among men. I also examine the opposed qualities coded as masculine and feminine in the classical literary and philosophical tradition, particularly mutability and constancy, and transmitted as a code of masculine ethical superiority in the Latin pedagogy of Dante's day, to define how masculine ideals determine Dante's initial definition of Latin as the nobler language in Convivio, as well as his reversal of that language hierarchy in De vulgari eloquentia.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Department of Germanic Languange, March 2001. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 2006. / Title from PDF title page screen. Advisor: Stephen Stallcup, Karen Weyler; submitted to the Dept. of English. Includes bibliographical references (p. 29-30, p. 61-62).

Edith Wharton’s male characters offer an important commentary on the evolving situation of the man in American society. Wharton did not wish for women to usurp all social positions from men but rather to claim their rightful position alongside them. Characters such as Lawrence Selden in The House of Mirth and Ralph Marvell in The Custom of the Country display the same characteristics of fear, passion, and vulnerability as do many of her primary female figures. Wharton’s societal concerns do not merely extend to that of her own sex but to that of the male in society who struggled with his sexuality, his body, and his role in marriage. This examination of masculinity within Wharton’s The House of Mirth, The Custom of the Country, and “The Other Two” will connect Wharton to the evolving man and his identity crisis, as her male characters have been analyzed by critics far less than her female characters. Specific aspects of masculinity often overlooked in her works, such as homosexuality and effeminacy, will come to the forefront and place her work in the context of the rigid expectations for “real American men” at the turn of the century.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2001. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 201-208).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--York University, 1997. Graduate Programme in English. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 445-460). Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following URL: http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/yorku/fullcit?pNQ22910.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--York University, 2000. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [328]-346). Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following URL: http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/yorku/fullcit?pNQ59150.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Memorial University of Newfoundland, 2002. / Bibliography: leaves 322-336.