Shakespeare and Masculinity in Southern Fiction

Shakespeare and Masculinity in Southern Fiction advances the idea that American, Southern, white, planter class authors have appropriated models and modes of masculinity from William Shakespeare. Keener traces the history of this appropriation and its attendant masculinities from authors as early as William Gilmore Simms, through Thomas Nelson Page and Thomas Dixon, to William Faulkner. This project distinctively ignores artificial divisions of literary studies, circumventing place and time in search of meaning. The work's inter-textual and inter-cultural approach affords a unique perspective on how masculinity is defined, modified by cultural circumstances, and expressed in succeeding literature. This far-reaching book bridges Shakespearean, American Southern, cultural materialist, and gender studies; offering a critical reappraisal.