What is Masculinity? Historical Dynamics from Antiquity to the Contemporary World

Across history, the ideas and practices of male identity have varied much between time and place: masculinity proves to be a slippery concept, not available to all men, sometimes even applied to women. This book analyses the dynamics of "masculinity" as both an ideology and lived experience -- how men have tried, and failed, to be "Real Men."

JOHN H. ARNOLD is Professor of Medieval History at Birkbeck College, University of London, UK. He works on various aspects of medieval culture and modern historiography.

SEAN BRADY isLecturer in Modern British History at Birkbeck College, University of London, UK. He is an historian of modern British history andhis Masculinity and Male Homosexuality in Britain, 1861-1913 has been internationally influential on the field. Both he and John H. Arnold are convening editors of Palgrave Macmillan's series Genders and Sexualities in History.

'The essays in What Is Masculinity? insightfully demonstrate that its titular question is inseparable from the questions of what were manhood, manliness and allied notions such as virility and gentlemanliness, leading up to contemporary scholarly conceptions of hegemonic masculinity and diverse masculinities. These stimulating explorations take us broadly and deeply through a wide range of times and places. They importantly challenge historians specifically, and the rest of us more generally, to push through the boundaries of traditional scholarship to reach more complex and nuanced understandings.'

- Harry Brod, Editor of The Making of Masculinities and Theorizing Masculinities, and Professor of Philosophy and Humanities at the University of Northern Iowa, USA