Jane Austen and Masculinity: (Transits: Literature, Thought & Culture, 1650-1850)

This wide-ranging collection of contemporary scholarship is the first to consider representations of men and masculinity in the work and adaptations of Jane Austen. Established and emerging Austen scholars from around the world discuss critical issues raised by her fictional treatment of masculinity, such as evolving social expectations, brothers and fathers, male lovers, soldiers and the military, queer and alternative sexualities, violence, and male devotees of Austen. Encompassing the novels, juvenilia, and popular adaptations of her work, Jane Austen and Masculinity makes an important intervention, building on established scholarship in masculinity studies and inviting further research on gender and sexuality within Austen’s corpus.

Published by Bucknell University Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.

Table of Contents:
List of Tables  
 
Acknowledgments      
 
Introduction: Austen and Masculinity           
Michael Kramp
 
Abbreviations 
 
P A R T I :  M E N , D O M E S T I C I T Y , A N D T H E F A M I L Y
1          Sketches of Men’s Kvetches: Domestic Masculinities in Emma and Persuasion      
Jan Fergus
2          Failures of the Patriarchy: Fathers as Role Models in Jane Austen   
Kit Kincade
3          The Paradox of Masculine Agency in Jane Austen’s Early Works     
Joanne Wilkes
 
P A R T  I I :  M A S C U L I N I T Y ,  H O N O R ,  A N D  F E E L I N G
4          “I could meet him in no other way”: Dueling, the Culture of Honor, and Modern Masculinity in Sense and Sensibility
Megan A. Woodworth
5          The Sensibility of Captain Benwick in Literary and Historical Context          
Natasha Duquette
6          “Till he began to stagger her”: Literary Men and Melancholia         
Enit K. Steiner
 
P A R T  I I I :  M A L E  S E X U A L I T I E S  A N D  D E S I R E S
7          Empire of the Sensible: Disciplining Love and the 1990’s Austen Craze      
Carol Siegel and Bryce Campbell
8          Austen’s Dandies: Frank Churchill and Henry Crawford Play Dress Up
Zachary Snider
 
P A R T  I V :  T H E  M E N  O F  A U S T E N ’ S  A F T E R L I V E S
9          Waltzing with Wellington, Biting with Byron: Heroes in Austen’s Tribute Texts
Lisa Hopkins
10        “What a man should be”: (Re-)Imagining Austenian Masculinity in Film and YouTube Fanvids
Rebecca White
11        Virginia Woolf and the Gentlemen Janeites, or the Origins of Modern Austen Criticism, 1870–1929
Jason Solinger
 
P A R T V :  F I L M M U S I C A N D M A S C U L I N I T Y
12        Performing to Strangers: Masculinity, Adaptation, and Music in Pride and Prejudice (1995)
Gayle Magee
13        Austen, Music, and Manhood
Linda Zionkowski and Miriam Hart
 
Bibliography
 
Index
 
About the Contributors
 

About the Author :
MICHAEL KRAMP is a professor of English at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. He is the author of Patriarchy’s Creative Resilience: Late-Victorian Speculative Fiction and Disciplining Love: Austen and the Modern Man and the editor of Jane Austen and Critical Theory.

Review :
“Jane Austen and Masculinity offers us new ways to understand the deep significance and complex meanings of Austen’s men. We’ve spent so much energy assessing Mr. Darcy’s hot-or-not-ness that we’ve rarely sought to understand how he fits into a more extensive consideration of Austenian manhood. This book’s essays consider a wide range of subjects, from heroes and fathers, to whiners and melancholics, to duels and music. Its contents draw us into historical and contemporary debates about Austen, gender, and masculinity. Editor Michael Kramp has given us a timely, compelling book on a surprisingly neglected subject.”
  - Devoney Looser (author of The Making of Jane Austen) "[Jane Austen and Masculinity] provides a comprehensive, helpful overview both of the emergence of masculinity studies as a field and also of existing scholarship on Austen’s depictions of men." (European Romantic Review) “The essays brought together here provide a suitably kaleidoscopic view of maleness, both in Austen’s own works and in the reformulations and extensions of those works critically, cinematically, and fictionally. . . . As a whole . . . this book provides thoughtful variety in its views of men and masculinity associated with Austen’s novels, all the richer for its broader considerations of contexts and aftereffects of Austen’s men.” (Eighteenth-Century Intelligencer) “Jane Austen and Masculinity is a welcome addition to the significant body of work on Austen and gender.” (Eighteenth-Century Fiction)