Reviews

In the 1970s and 1980s, the women's movement gave rise to a torrent of feminist scholarship that brought new insight into the role that gender played in the writing and interpretation of literature. Now, the men's movement is catching up. Rosen analyzes six standard works of the literary canon-- Beowulf , Sir Gawain and the Green Knight , Hamlet , Paradise Lost , Hard Times , and Sons and Lovers --in terms of how the concept of masculinity has evolved. The key to his discussion is the idea of masculine role stress: a conflict between the masculine ideals and expectations of the time and what men actually experience and how they behave. Out of that tension come new definitions of masculinity. Rosen concludes that there is no such thing as a fixed, essential masculinity, and he also reflects, with a nod to Robert Bly's Iron John , on the needs of men today. For most collections.-- Bryan Aubrey, Fairfield, Ia.