Masculinity and Emotion in Early Modern English Literature

Offering new readings of works by Shakespeare, Spenser, and their contemporaries, this study examines the profound impact of the cultural shift in the English aristocracy from feudal warriors to emotionally expressive courtiers or gentlemen on all kinds of men in early modern English literature. Jennifer Vaught traces the gradual emergence of men of feeling during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, to the blossoming of this literary version of manhood during the eighteenth century.

Jennifer C. Vaught is Jean-Jacques and Aurore Labbé Fournet / Board of Regents Professor in English at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, USA.