Male Characters’ Morbid Jealousy in Three-Generation Series Novels Focused on “Sounmyeong” in Sohyeonseong-rok Series

2021 ◽  
Vol 53 ◽  
pp. 159-190
Author(s):  
Hye-ran Gong
Keyword(s):  
Male Characters

Performing Masculinity and the Crisis of Transclass Man in August Wilson’s Drama

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Khatija Bibi Khan ◽  
Owen Seda
Keyword(s):  
Social Identity ◽  
Social Values ◽  
Social Construct ◽  
Cultural Experience ◽  
Great Cost ◽  
Social Milieu ◽  
Male Characters ◽  
The Social ◽  
North End

Feminist critics have identified the social constructedness of masculinity and have explored how male characters often find themselves caught up in a ceaseless quest to propagate and live up to an acceptable image of manliness. These critics have also explored how the effort to live up to the dictates of this social construct has often come at great cost to male protagonists. In this paper, we argue that August Wilson’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom and Joe Turner’s Come and Gone present the reader with a coterie of male characters who face the dual crisis of living up to a performed masculinity and the pitfalls that come with it, and what Mazrui has referred to as the phenomenon of “transclass man.” Mazrui uses the term transclass man to refer to characters whose socio-economic and socio-cultural experience displays a fluid degree of transitionality. We argue that the phenomenon of transclass man works together with the challenges of performed masculinity to create characters who, in an effort to adjust to and fit in with a new and patriarchal urban social milieu in America’s newly industrialised north, end up destroying themselves or failing to realise other possibilities that may be available to them. Using these two plays as illustrative examples, we further argue that staged masculinity and the crisis of transclass man in August Wilson’s plays create male protagonists who break ranks with the social values of a collectively shared destiny to pursue an individualistic personal trajectory, which only exacerbates their loss of social identity and a true sense of who they are.

From Culturazing Nature to Naturalizing Culture: The Differing Function of Animal Imagery in Defining Bodies from Homer’s Odysseus to Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad

2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 15
Author(s):  
Begüm Tuğlu
Keyword(s):  
Primary Sources ◽  
Western Society ◽  
Male Voice ◽  
Women Authors ◽  
Western Literature ◽  
Male Characters ◽  
Animal Imagery ◽  
Literary Heritage ◽  
Man And Nature ◽  
History Of

Feminist authors have long been trying to alter the patriarchal structure of the Western society through different aspects. One of these aspects, if not the strongest, is the struggle to overcome centuries long dominance of male authors who have created a masculine history, culture and literature. As recent works of women authors reveal, the strongest possibility of actually achieving an equalitarian society lies beneath the chance of rewriting the history of Western literature. Since the history of Western literature relies on dichotomies that are reminiscences of modernity, the solution to overcome the inequality between the two sexes seems to be to rewrite the primary sources that have influenced the cultural heritage of literature itself. The most dominant dichotomies that shape this literary heritage are represented through the bonds between the concepts of women/man and nature/culture. As one of the most influential epics that depict these dichotomies, Homer's Odysseus reveals how poetry strengthens the authority of the male voice. In order to define the ideal "man", Homer uses a wide scope of animal imagery while forming the identities of male characters. Margaret Atwood, on the other hand, is not contended with Homer's poem in that it never narrates the story from the side of women. As a revisionist mythmaker, Atwood takes the famous story of Odysseus, yet this time presents it from the perspective of Penelope, simultaneously playing on the animal imagery. Within this frame, I intend to explore in this paper how the animal imagery in Homer's most renowned Odysseus functions as a reinforcing tool in the creation of masculine identities and how Margaret Atwood's The Penelopiad defies this formation of identities with the aim of narrating the story from the unheard side, that of the women who are eminently present yet never heard.

Mummified Fragments: Characters and Themes in Hariharan’s Novel The Ghosts of Vasu Master

Think India ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 827-835
Author(s):  
R. Ramakrishnan
Keyword(s):  
School Teacher ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Male Characters

Hariharan’s versatility as an author with a mission to subvert the entire tradition can be recognized in every work of fiction she has created. For this purpose in her second novel, The Ghosts of Vasu Master she experiments with a male protagonist and a host of other male characters. Vasu is the protagonist of the novel. He is a retired school teacher from P.G. Boys’ school, Ellipettai. He leads a lonely widower’s life with two of his sons employed and settled away from home. This article scrutinizes the life of an idower is all aspects.

A New Kind of Monster, Cowboy, and Crusader?

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-63
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Al-Jbouri ◽  
Shauna Pomerantz
Keyword(s):  
Textual Analysis ◽  
Gender Norms ◽  
Critical Examination ◽  
Male Characters ◽  
New Man ◽  
Gender Neutrality

Representations of boys and men in Disney films often escape notice due to presumed gender neutrality. Considering this omission, we explore masculinities in films from Disney’s lucrative subsidiary Pixar to determine how masculinities are represented and have and/or have not disrupted dominant gender norms as constructed for young boys’ viewership. Using Raewyn Connell’s theory of gender hegemony and related critiques, we suggest that while Pixar films strive to provide their male characters with a feminist spin, they also continue to reify hegemonic masculinities through sharp contrasts to femininities and by privileging heterosexuality. Using a feminist textual analysis that includes the Toy Story franchise, Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, and Coco, we suggest that Pixar films, while offering audiences a “new man,” continue to reinforce hegemonic masculinities in subtle ways that require critical examination to move from presumed gender neutrality to an understanding of continued, though shifting, gender hegemony.

Haunted by the Thirties

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Deirdre David
Keyword(s):  
World War ◽  
World War 2 ◽  
Male Characters ◽  
English Village ◽  
Temporary Settlement

At the beginning of World War 2, Pamela, Neil, and her mother Amy moved to Laleham, a village on the Thames. Shortly thereafter, Neil joined the Army and was posted to India; and on New Year’s Day 1941 Pamela gave birth to her son Andrew Morven. While coping with rationing, the sound of bombers overhead, and the red sky of London in the Blitz, she continued to write. Her novel Winter Quarters deals with the temporary settlement of an artillery battalion in a quiet English village and is notable for her deft handling of male characters. In 1941 she reviewed enthusiastically the first of C.P. Snow’s Strangers and Brothers novels and they began exchanging letters and to meet for lunch in London. In May 1944 Pamela gave birth to her daughter Lindsay Jean.

Rewriting Immigrant Masculinities in Selected Works of Bharati Mukherjee

2021 ◽  
pp. 106082652199512
Author(s):  
Rima Bhattacharya
Keyword(s):  
Bharati Mukherjee ◽  
Economic Success ◽  
Narrative Space ◽  
Male Characters ◽  
Gender Oppression ◽  
Male Immigrant

The precedence of women over men in Bharati Mukherjee’s works reflects an attempt on her part to construct a feminine narrative as a means of countering the marginalized position that women usually occupy in mainstream traditional literature. This paper probes how with such displacement of female perspectives into an authoritative position, routinely prescribed for men, Mukherjee revises the suspiciously stable place occupied by male immigrant subjects in fictional writings. Employing the critical voices of several masculinity theorists, this paper explores how immigrant men’s conceptions of masculinity are reformulated and challenged by their migration processes. Seen in the light of gender oppression, the male characters, seem to occupy an ineffective and feminine narrative space even in powerful male stories of immigrant economic success written by Mukherjee. Finally, the paper probes how Mukherjee’s act of rewriting masculinity from inventive perspectives in her fictions introduces new, more egalitarian, and alternate models of manhood.

Reproductive Failure in Populations of the Dog-Whelk, Nucella Lapillus, Caused by Imposex Induced by Tributyltin from Antifouling Paints

1986 ◽  
Vol 66 (4) ◽  
pp. 767-777 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. E. Gibbs ◽  
G. W. Bryan
Keyword(s):  
Vas Deferens ◽  
Early Stage ◽  
Premature Death ◽  
Intermediate Stage ◽  
Reproductive Failure ◽  
Nucella Lapillus ◽  
Egg Capsules ◽  
Male Characters ◽  
High Incidence ◽  
Declining Populations

The development of male characters, notably a penis and a vas deferens, on the female (the phenomenon of ‘imposex’) of the dog-whelk, Nucella lapillus, is described. Three stages are recognized: an ‘early’ stage involving the formation of a vas deferens and a small penis, an ‘intermediate’ stage characterized by the enlargement of the female penis to a size approaching that of the male and a ‘late’ stage during which the female opening (vulva) is occluded by overgrowth of vas deferens tissue. This blockage of the pallial oviduct prevents the release of egg capsules and renders the female sterile. The extent and cause of such reproductive failure is evident from the high incidence of females containing aborted capsules in declining populations close to sources of tributyltin (TBT) contamination. These same populations comprise fewer females than expected and it would appear that the accumulation of aborted capsules within the pallial oviduct eventually causes the premature death of the female.

XXV. The Secret of Love's Labour's Lost

PMLA ◽  
1924 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 581-611 ◽  
Author(s):  
Austin K. Gray
Keyword(s):  
Literary Theory ◽  
Narrative Form ◽  
Midsummer Night's Dream ◽  
Working Hypothesis ◽  
Male Characters ◽  
Historical Fact ◽  
Love's Labour's Lost ◽  
Definite Statement ◽  
Made In

[In the following paper, for reasons of brevity, a working hypothesis has been presented in narrative form: wherever a definite statement of historical fact has been made in support of a literary theory, the authority has been given in the footnotes. The article aims at elucidating certain problems in Love's Labour's Lost by correlating them with certain matters of historical fact which took place in and about the year 1591. The following points constitute problems in Love's Labour's Lost: (a) date of composition and first performance; (b) The unexpected dénoûment in the postponed marriages; (c) The choice of names for the leading male characters, Navarre, Berowne, etc.; (d) The curious emphasis laid upon the killing of the deer by the Princess; (e) The similarity of the Pageant scene at the close of the play to the Tragedy of Pyramus and Thisbe in The Midsummer Night's Dream; (f) The satire on Euphuism and Sonnets and other courtly affectations; (g) The unique observance by Shakespeare of the unities of time and place. The ensuing narrative has been evolved by applying to these problems the following matters of historical fact: (a) Burleigh's attempts, 1589–94, to force Southampton into marriage with his grand-daughter, Elizabeth de Vere, and Southampton's successful evasion of his betrothal; (b) Southampton's flight to France, 1591, to take part in the war in Normandy; (c) The Royal Progress, 1591, to Portsmouth and certain incidents in the entertainment of the Queen at Cowdray House.]

scholarly journals From Novels to Video Games: Romantic Love and Narrative Form in Japanese Visual Novels and Romance Adventure Games

Arts ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 42
Author(s):  
Kumiko Saito
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
Romantic Love ◽  
Narrative Form ◽  
Narrative Strategies ◽  
Male Characters ◽  
Adventure Games ◽  
Narrative Forms ◽  
Female Audience ◽  
Modern Identity

Video games are powerful narrative media that continue to evolve. Romance games in Japan, which began as text-based adventure games and are today known as bishōjo games and otome games, form a powerful textual corpus for literary and media studies. They adopt conventional literary narrative strategies and explore new narrative forms formulated by an interface with computer-generated texts and audiovisual fetishism, thereby challenging the assumptions about the modern textual values of storytelling. The article first examines differences between visual novels that feature female characters for a male audience and romance adventure games that feature male characters for a female audience. Through the comparison, the article investigates how notions of romantic love and relationship have transformed from the modern identity politics based on freedom and the autonomous self to the decentered model of mediation and interaction in the contemporary era.

Homosexualité, Islam et désacralisation du pouvoir royal dans Le jour du Roi d'Abdellah Taïa

2021 ◽  
pp. 127-143
Author(s):  
Taïeb Berrada
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Identification Process ◽  
Male Characters ◽  
Oedipal Complex ◽  
The Creation

In his novel Le jour du Roi Abdellah Taïa explores the theme of alterity in its relation to two political and symbolic forces: expressing one’s self in the language of the Other and narrating homo-erotic and homosexual relationships in Morocco under the dictatorship of Hassan II. It is the translation of these two aspects that leads to the creation of a new narrative about homosexual Franco-Moroccan identity. This narrative, in turn, reveals the instability of a model of identification subjected to a normalizing sexual apparatus controlling bodies and minds in a place where homosexuality is still punishable by law. This renders the identification process for the two main characters of the novel particularly problematic as they can no longer sustain it without going back to the sources of foundational myths and more particularly to the original murder in Islam. This article argues that the killing of one character by the other goes back to the original murder of Abel by Cain, a model which becomes emancipated from the Western Oedipal complex, translating a new conception of a love relation between two male characters. By so doing, it calls for a reevaluation of the normativity imposed by the king who is using his power based on a patriarchal interpretation of religious legitimacy in view of political gain.

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