Orienting Masculinity, Orienting Nation: W. Somerset Maugham's Exotic FictionAlthough their settings span a wide geographical area, from the South Pacific to India, Maugham's exotic short stories, novels, and travelogues all, ultimately, focus on the creation of a masculine British identity. In this first book to address Maugham's fiction in light of recent developments in postcolonial, gender, and cultural theory, Holden argues that Maugham's work can be understood as an attempt to negotiate between two alternative masculine identities: those of private homosexual and public writer. Holden identifies Maugham's attempts to cultivate a public persona as a writer whose heterosexuality is confirmed through a process of control of language. Furthermore, Holden illuminates the fluidity of language that Maugham, in contrast to his public persona, associated with homosexuality. The basis of this study is the provocative notion that Maugham's texts, despite their exotic locations, ultimately dramatize a struggle over masculine British identity. |
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Page 68
... rhetoric of tourism is to contrast modern and premodern in such a manner as to confirm modernity : [ T ] he best indication of the final victory of modernity over other sociocultural arrangements is not the disappearance of the ...
... rhetoric of tourism is to contrast modern and premodern in such a manner as to confirm modernity : [ T ] he best indication of the final victory of modernity over other sociocultural arrangements is not the disappearance of the ...
Page 95
... rhetoric of British Malaya , to modify Sara Suleri's phrase , was constituted by medievalism , the representation of Malay society as similar to that of England in the Middle Ages . The sultans of the Malay peninsula were presented as ...
... rhetoric of British Malaya , to modify Sara Suleri's phrase , was constituted by medievalism , the representation of Malay society as similar to that of England in the Middle Ages . The sultans of the Malay peninsula were presented as ...
Page 96
... rhetoric of Maugham's Malayan short stories . A close reading of " The Yellow Streak " shows parallels between Izzart's closeted racial alterity and the homosexuality at the heart of contemporaneous British constructions of manliness ...
... rhetoric of Maugham's Malayan short stories . A close reading of " The Yellow Streak " shows parallels between Izzart's closeted racial alterity and the homosexuality at the heart of contemporaneous British constructions of manliness ...
Contents
The Moon and Sixpence 22 | 27 |
The Trembling of a Leaf | 47 |
On a Chinese Screen | 63 |
Copyright | |
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Orienting Masculinity, Orienting Nation: W. Somerset Maugham's Exotic Fiction Philip Holden No preview available - 1996 |
Common terms and phrases
addiction allochrony analysis Asia Barthes Barthes's binarism British British Malaya characters China Chinese Screen closet colonial discourse confession constructions of masculinity contrast critical culture desire East embedded narrative Empire of Signs Erik femininity feminized flâneur focaliser Foucault frame narrative Fred gaze gender Gerald Haxton Girardian triangle heterosexual homoerotic homoeroticism homosocial India Isabel island Izzart Kitty landscape Larry Larry's literary London Louise Malay Malaya Malayan stories manliness Maugham's fiction Maugham's Malayan Maugham's narrator Maugham's novel Maugham's oriental fiction Maugham's short story Maugham's texts Maugham's writings mediation metaphor modern Moon and Sixpence narrator's Narrow Corner native nature Neilson's nineteenth century opium Painted Veil premodern present protagonist race racial alterity Razor's Edge reader remarks representation represented rhetoric Saunders Saunders's Sedgwick seems semiotic sexuality signifying society Somerset Maugham South Pacific space Strickland Tahiti textual tropes twentieth century West Western woman women Writer's Notebook Yellow Streak