Becoming the gentleman
Subtitle: British literature and the invention of modern masculinity, 1660-1815
By: Jason D. Solinger
Series: Global masculinities
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Published: 2012
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 191
ISBN-13: 9780230391833
Subjects: Masculinity in literature; English literature; History and criticism; Men in literature
Description: "The question of what it meant to be a gentleman haunted Britons throughout the long eighteenth century. This period saw the gentleman emerge as the dominant persona of essayists, critics, and male conduct book writers as well as the ideal husband imagined by the authors of heroine-centered domestic fiction. In Becoming the Gentleman, Jason D. Solinger explains why this masculine ideal became a cultural obsession. What was at stake in the definition of the gentleman, he argues, was nothing less than a new kind of ruling-class male: a modern man whose knowledge of the world fit him for London parlors and imperial boardrooms. Examining such authors as John Locke, Alexander Pope, Frances Burney, Jane Austen and Sir Walter Scott, Solinger's account will appeal to literary historians as well as readers interested in the role nostalgia plays in forging the present."--Publisher's website.