Conflicting Masculinities: Men in Television Period Drama (Library Of Gender And Popular Culture Ser.)

By: Katherine Byrne and Julie Anne Taddeo and James Leggott

Sign Up Now! Already a Member? Log In
You must be logged into UK education collection to access this title. Learn about membership options, or view our freely available titles.

Synopsis: Never before has period drama offered viewers such an assortment of complex male characters, from transported felons and syphilitic detectives to shell shocked soldiers and gangland criminals. Neo-Victorian Gothic fictions like Penny Dreadful represent masculinity at its darkest, Poldark and Outlander have refashioned the romantic hero and anti-heritage series like Peaky Blinders portray masculinity in crisis, at moments when the patriarchy was being bombarded by forces like World War I, the rise of first wave feminism and the breakdown of Empire. Scholars of film, media, literature and history explore the very different types of maleness offered by contemporary television and show how the intersection of class, race, history and masculinity in period dramas has come to hold such broad appeal to twenty-first-century audiences.