BBC Radio 4 LW

In Our Time

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas, people and events that have shaped our world.

In Our Time: Masculinity in Literature

20/01/2000

Masculinity in Literature

BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time, Masculinity in Literature

Melvyn Bragg investigates the changing ideals of masculinity in 20th century literature.

Melvyn Bragg discusses the changing archetypes of masculinity in 20th century literature, from Hemingway to Hornby, and examines whether the British ideal is at odds with its American counterpart.

Melvyn Bragg investigates masculinity in literature. Ernest Hemingway wrote in The Old Man and the Sea, “A man can be destroyed but not defeated”. In a time when traditional male roles have been systematically challenged it is a sentiment that seems to come from a strangely distant past, and the men that inhabit fiction today can seem a world away from Hemingway’s brave heroes - although we must remember James Bond and Hannibal Lecter. But has there been a change in the last century in literary fiction or does that one strand not stand for more than a small part of the equation? One of the successful liberating movements of the twentieth century was the increasing enfranchisement of women. Accompanying, perhaps consequent on this, in some fiction at any rate, were signs of the de-testosteroning of man. Are the ideals of masculinity that underlie the portrayal of men by today’s authors so very different from the images of men from earlier in the twentieth century? And is there a British literary ideal of man that is at odds with its American counterpart?With Martin Amis, author of Money, Success and The Information; Cora Kaplan, feminist cultural critic and Professor of English, Southampton University.

BBC Radio 4

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

Accessibility links

Programme Index

In Our Time

Masculinity in Literature

Genres

Brand

BBC Radio 4 LW

About BBC Radio 4

About this data