Literature as a Mirror of Society

From 1950 to 1999 the fiction genre of Ladlit presented British readers witha romantic comic popular male literature which was regarded as a chanceto examine male identity in contemporary Britain. But by the beginning of the21st century one was seeking for a new story of masculine identity. In themeantime there has been a focus on masculinity in language and genderstudies whereas the exclusive attention had formerly been upon femininity.The tradition of man being constituted in terms of universal normative valueshas led to the phenomenon of 'invisible masculinity'. However there has alwaysbeen a discourse available to men which allows them to representthemselves as people or mankind.The book examines how the representation of masculinities has changed insociety in the recent fifty years. Using different theories of gender studiesmasculinities and the effects of socio-economical changes the following novelswill be discussed: Amis's Lucky Jim (1954) Sillitoe's Saturday Night andSunday 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.