1st Edition
The Inward Gaze Masculinity and Subjectivity in Modern Culture
First published in 1992, The Inward Gaze looks at men’s fantasies and self-images from a wide range of texts (notably boy’s superhero comics, modernist literary classics, and a Freudian case-study) to discuss the theories of subjectivity, masculinity, and emotion.
The author explores the split between the experience-based claims of the men’s movement and the discourse theories of postmodernism. Does this division reveal a continuing refusal of masculine self-awareness? Why does postmodernist theory investigate desire and ignore emotion?
This is a ground-breaking and controversial book which seeks to reformulate the way we think about men’s subjectivity. Its interdisciplinary approach weaves together material from many different sources and will be of vital interest to students of literature, cultural studies, gender studies, and psychoanalysis.
Preface 1. Introduction: The inward male gaze Part 1 2. Boys will be men: Boy’s superhero comics 3. The Martian landscapes of modernism: Joyce, Yeats, Lawrence 4. Are men rats? Freud’s history of an obsessional neurosis Part 2 5. Theories of modern masculinities 6. The lost language of emotion
Biography
Peter Middleton is Professor of English at the University of Southampton, UK. His research interests include science and literature, modern and contemporary poetry, poetry performance, ecology and climate change, codes in new media, and creative non-fiction. He is on the editorial boards of Textual Practice, English, New Formations, and the Journal of British and Irish Innovative Poetry.
