David Kennedy
'Open secrets': Masculine subjectivity and other men's bodies in some late twentieth-century British poetry
Kennedy, David
Authors
Abstract
Stephen Heath has asked in 'Male Feminism', 'Do I write male? What does that mean?' Contemporary British poetry likes to imagine itself as ideologically innocent, particularly in terms of male subjectivity and masculinity. Masculinity becomes, therefore, something that is hidden in plain sight. This article argues that masculinity is often discussed through the discursive production of other men's bodies and talismanic objects; and examines this in the poetry of Simon Armitage, Michael Hofmann, and Andrew Motion. A man produces the bodies of other men and of boys discursively in order to energise himself for fully active participation in the economy of recognition and judgement, production and critique, on which masculinity relies. The production of these bodies and their subsequent identification in a continuum of 'not-me's' enables a man to judge where and how to perform his own masculinity. In the work of Hofmann and Motion, masculinity is seen as difficult patrimony; while in Armitage's poetry, discursive production itself and, consequently, masculinity are placed, as it were, in inverted commas (p. 169).
Citation
Kennedy, D. (2011). 'Open secrets': Masculine subjectivity and other men's bodies in some late twentieth-century British poetry. Textual Practice, 25(1), 87-107. https://doi.org/10.1080/0950236X.2011.537551
Journal Article Type | Review |
---|---|
Online Publication Date | Jan 17, 2011 |
Publication Date | Feb 1, 2011 |
Deposit Date | Nov 13, 2014 |
Journal | Textual Practice |
Print ISSN | 0950-236X |
Publisher | Routledge |
Peer Reviewed | Peer Reviewed |
Volume | 25 |
Issue | 1 |
Pages | 87-107 |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1080/0950236X.2011.537551 |
Keywords | Contemporary British poetry; Masculinity; Male Bodies; Men in literature; British Poetry Post-1945; Gender |
Public URL | https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/462079 |
Publisher URL | https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0950236X.2011.537551 |
Contract Date | Nov 13, 2014 |
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