Masculinity and its metonyms

Abstract

The author responds to the articles in this issue by demonstrating how a twentieth-century poem might provide us with a fresh perspective on the situated historical understandings of bodies gendered as male provided here. Amichai uses the literary figure of metonymy to show how ‘a man’ has no time for history: he allows a part to speak for the whole, and a specific cultural moment to stand for any time. Historians and literary scholars alike would benefit from attending to our own metonyms, and the historical continuities we assume or assert as we seek to investigate cultural difference.

Keywords::

• literature
• popular culture
• metaphor
• poetry
• metonymy
• gender
• masculinity
• body
• Hebrew Bible
• historiography

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

^1. For copyright reasons I will quote in excerpt from the second and final stanzas: the poem in full may be found in Amichai, Selected Poetry, 158. With thanks to Jeffrey Shoulson.

^2.Amichai, Selected Poetry, 158/6–13, 25–9.

^3.Martin, “Michel de Montaigne's embodied masculinity”. Behrend-Martinez, “Spain violated”.

^4.Tlusty, “Invincible blades and invulnerable bodies”. Hardwick, “Policing paternity”.

^5.Nussdorfer, “Masculine hierarchies in Roman ecclesiastical households.” Kane, “Masculinity and political geographies in England, Ireland and North America.”

^6.Gouwens, “Emasculation as empowerment”.

^7.Carruthers, “On Affliction and Reading, Weeping and Argument.”

^8. “his soul…/is very professional./ Only his body remains forever/ an amateur. It tries and it misses,/ gets muddled, doesn't learn a thing[.]” Amichai, Selected Poetry, 158/18–22.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Fiona Somerset

Fiona Somerset is professor of English and co-director of Medieval Studies at the University of Connecticut. She has recently edited Truth and Tales: Medieval Popular Culture and the Written Word (with Nicholas Watson; Ohio State University Press, 2015); her books include Feeling Like Saints: Lollard Writings after Wyclif (Cornell, 2014); Four Wycliffite Dialogues EETS 333 (Oxford, 2009); and Clerical Discourse and Lay Audience in Late Medieval England (Cambridge, 1998).