Literature as a Mirror of Society

Revision with unchanged content. From 1950 to 1999, the fiction genre of Ladlit presented British readers with a romantic, comic, popular male literature, which was regarded as a chance to examine male identity in contemporary Britain. But by the beginning of the 21st century one was seeking for a new story of masculine identity. In the mean­time, there has been a focus on masculinity in language and gender studies, whereas the exclusive attention had formerly been upon femininity. The tradition of man being constituted in terms of universal, normative values has led to the phenomenon of 'invisible masculinity'. However, there has al­ways been a discourse available to men which allows them to represent them­selves as people or mankind. The book examines how the representation of masculinities has changed in so­ciety in the recent fifty years. Using different theories of gender studies, mas­culinities and the effects of socio-economical changes, the following no­vels will be discussed: Amis's Lucky Jim (1954), Sillitoe's Saturday Night and Sun­day Morning (1958), Hollinghurst's The Swimming-Pool Library (1988) and Hornby's About a Boy (1998). The book especially addresses scholars of Literature and Social Sciences.