We see that javascript is disabled or not supported by your browser - javascript is needed for important actions on the site. Read more

What's New - Home - Login

Member $avings: $81,542,389.78 | Books Available: 800,226 | Members Online: 288

Swap Used Books - Buy New Books at Great Prices!

How To Swap Books Sign Up Search submenu

PBS Market (New Books)

Gift Buying Guide

Book Browser Advanced Search Books Posted Today Member Book Reviews Award Winning Books NYT Best Sellers Amazon Best Sellers Most Traveled Copies Club Wish List

Discussion Forums Book Lists

Club Lists My Book Lists My Watched Lists Create a List

Blog Donations

School Donation Program In Memory of... Military Donation Program Friends of PBS

Box-O-Books Maps The Eclectic Pen Fun Stuff

20 Questions Sudoku Bookmark Creator

Top 100

Requests Posts Swappers Referrers Reviewers

Pulse of PBS Spread The Word

Invite Friends Bookmarks Facebook Page Facebook App More Ways...

Photo Gallery Recipes Club Tag Cloud Member Testimonials

Help Center submenu

How To Swap Books Browse Help Docs Ask the Librarian PBS Member Icons Live Help

Kiosk

PBS Market (New Books) Go Shopping Buy Credits Buy PBS Money Upgrade Membership Gift Certificates Transfer Credits

Need Help?

Search - From Chivalry to Terrorism : War and the Changing Nature of Masculinity

From Chivalry to Terrorism War and the Changing Nature of Masculinity
Author: Leo Braudy

From Chivalry to Terrorism is a brilliant exploration of the conscious and unconscious ways in which European and American cultures have established an essential role for military and warrior virtue in defining masculinity. — Beginning with the world of honor in the chivalric Middle Ages and ending in our age of global terrorism and limite... more »d war, Leo Braudy shows how perceptions and images of masculinity have changed in relation to major wars, advances in military technology, mutations in the idea of the state and how it wages war, and shifting attitudes toward both sexuality and citizenship.

Gathering insights from history, literature, and art—as well as from facts and fantasies about male sexuality—Braudy focuses on pivotal developments such as the revolution caused by gunpowder in the fifteenth century, by the mass armies of the eighteenth century, by the fears of national degeneracy in the nineteenth century, and by weapons of mass destruction in the twentieth century. He also examines less obvious topics such as the growth of sports and gymnastics, the impact of the American West on the national and international imagination, and the efforts of the promoters of a “civilized” male identity to distinguish it from the savage barbarian on the one hand and from women and minority forms of masculinity on the other.

Finally, he makes clear that the view of a renewed warrior masculinity is at the heart of the propaganda of the Islamic terrorists, as it was for Hitler and Mussolini. War is carried on in the name of a warrior past when men were truly men. The enemy is the West, where gender is a continuum rather than the absolute set of differences between male and female that the warrior sensibility requires. The war against terrorism is thus less a literal war about territory and resources than it is a symbolic war about how men should be and behave.

In writing this unique history of masculinity, Braudy discusses both real and imagined characters. Among them are Don Quixote, Henry V, Oliver Cromwell, Don Juan, Frederick the Great, Napoleon, Custer, T. E. Lawrence, Osama bin Laden, and the heroes of Stephen Crane and Ernest Hemingway.

At its heart, From Chivalry to Terrorism is about the metamorphosis of masculinity; it is a powerful and persuasive argument against the assumption that all sexual behavior is innate. Countering the sociobiological emphasis on the fixity of human nature, it stresses human changeability and responsiveness to circumstances.

ISBN-13: 9780679450351
ISBN-10: 0679450351
Publication Date: 10/28/2003
Pages: 640
Rating:

0 stars, based on 0 rating

Publisher: Knopf
Book Type: Hardcover
Other Versions: Paperback
Members Wishing: 0
Reviews: Amazon | Write a Review

Genres:

History >> Military >> General
Nonfiction >> Social Sciences >> Gender Studies >> Men
Nonfiction >> Social Sciences >> Sociology >> General

Back to the Top ↑

Search - From Chivalry to Terrorism : War and the Changing Nature of Masculinity

Loading...