Title: Masculinity in the margins : hidden narratives of the self in T.E. Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom
Source document: Brno studies in English. 2010, vol. 36, iss. 2, pp. [101]-111
Extent
[101]-111
-
ISSN0524-6881 (print)1805-0867 (online)
Stable URL (handle): https://hdl.handle.net/11222.digilib/105069
Type: Article
Language
License: Not specified license
Notice: These citations are automatically created and might not follow citation rules properly.
Abstract(s)
Recent work in the field of life writing has insightfully studied texts that blur the line between fiction and nonfiction in self-reflexively constructing (narratives of) the self. One of the more productive lenses for studying life writing has been that of gender, but it has primarily focused on texts by women. Men, for centuries perceived as the "unmarked" gender, have, paradoxically, eluded academic analysis as embodied gendered beings and thus seem to call for more critical attention. The present paper seeks to do so by looking into a hybrid life narrative, T. E. Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom, and analyzing the way in which it, in a dialogue with Lawrence's letters, inscribes masculinity. The analysis, proceeding from the work of Gagnier (1990) and Gilmore (1994) and extending it to the study of men, focuses on what statements about the self, explicitly expressed or confined between the lines, do within the narrative and in the self-creation of the author. The main attention is given to the representations of the body and their intersection with the Victorian codes of masculinity. It is argued that the very denial of the body makes the body present throughout the text, as a narrative trope and a moral presence. Such an analysis, it is hoped, will help to reassess the multilayered presence of corporeality in men's life narratives and its relationship with discourses of masculinity.
References
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[21] Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky (1985) Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire. New York: Columbia University Press.
[22] Smith, Sidonie (1993) Subjectivity, Identity, and the Body: Women's Autobiographical Practices in the Twentieth Century. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
[23] Stanley, Liz (1992) The Auto/Biographical I: Theory and Practice of Feminist Auto/Biography. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
[24] Swindells, Julia (ed.) (1995) The Uses of Autobiography. London: Taylor & Francis.
[25] Tasker, Yvonne (1993) Spectacular Bodies: Gender, Genre and the Action Cinema. London and New York: Routledge.
[2] Barr, James (2008) Setting the Desert on Fire: T. E. Lawrence and Britain's Secret War in Arabia, 1916–1918. New York: W. W. Norton.
[3] Bederman, Gail (1995) Manliness and Civilization. A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880–1917. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
[4] Blommaert, Jan (2005) Discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. | DOI 10.1017/CBO9780511610295
[5] Braudy, Leo (2003) From Chivalry to Terrorism: War and the Changing Nature of Masculinity. New York: Vintage.
[6] Broughton, Trev Lynn (1999) Men of Letters, Writing Lives. Masculinity and Literary Auto/Biography in the Late Victorian Period. London and New York: Routledge.
[7] Brown, Malcolm (ed.) (1992) T. E. Lawrence. The Selected Letters. New York: Paragon House.
[8] Connell, R. W. (2005) Masculinities. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Polity Press.
[9] Cook, Albert (1989) 'Seven Pillars of Wisdom: Turns and Counter-Turns'. In: Meyers, Jeffrey (ed.) T. E. Lawrence: Soldier, Writer, Legend. New York: St. Martin Press, 87–109.
[10] Gagnier, Regenia (1990) Subjectivities: A History of Self-Representation in Britain 1832–1920. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
[11] Gilmore, Leigh (1994) Autobiographics: A Feminist Theory of Women's Self-Representation. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
[12] Haynes, Samuel (ed.) (1977) The Auden Generation. New York: Viking.
[13] Hull, Keith (1984) 'Seven Pillars of Wisdom: The Secret, Contestable Documentary'. In: Tabachnik, Stephen (ed.) The T. E. Lawrence Puzzle. Athens: Georgia University Press.
[14] James, Lawrence (1994) The Golden Warrior. The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia. New York: Marlowe.
[15] Knightley, Phillip and Colin Simpson (1971) The Secret Lives of Lawrence of Arabia. London: Panther.
[16] Krishnaswamy, Revathi (2002) 'The Economy of Colonial Desire'. In: Adams, Rachel and Savran, David (eds.) The Masculinity Studies Reader. Malden and Oxford: Blackwell, 292–317.
[17] Lawrence, T. E. (1962) Seven Pillars of Wisdom. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.
[18] Mack, John E. (1976) A Prince of Our Disorder. The Life of T. E. Lawrence. Boston: Little, Brown.
[19] Meyers, Jeffrey (1989) 'T. E. Lawrence in His Letters'. In: Meyers, Jeffrey (ed.) T. E. Lawrence: Soldier, Writer, Legend. New Essays. New York: St. Martin Press, 8–27.
[20] Moore-Gilbert, Bart (2009) Postcolonial Life-Writing: Culture, Politics and Self-Representation. London and New York: Routledge.
[21] Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky (1985) Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire. New York: Columbia University Press.
[22] Smith, Sidonie (1993) Subjectivity, Identity, and the Body: Women's Autobiographical Practices in the Twentieth Century. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
[23] Stanley, Liz (1992) The Auto/Biographical I: Theory and Practice of Feminist Auto/Biography. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
[24] Swindells, Julia (ed.) (1995) The Uses of Autobiography. London: Taylor & Francis.
[25] Tasker, Yvonne (1993) Spectacular Bodies: Gender, Genre and the Action Cinema. London and New York: Routledge.