The Whig Interpretation of Masculinity? Honour and Sexuality in Late Medieval Manhood

Abstract

The history of masculinity has recently encountered a general problem which has often arisen in the study of past societies. A number of commentators have drawn attention to the difficulty of reconciling modern categories of analysis with the cultural concepts of their object of study.1 Two divergent tendencies have been identified in the study of masculinity. Some writers, it has been suggested, have favoured a sociologically informed approach, taking their agenda from modern social theory, whilst others have followed a primarily cultural historical method, focusing their efforts on the explication of contemporary structures of ideas.2 A certain dissatisfaction with the ‘linguistic turn’ in historical studies has arguably contributed to focusing criticism on the second of these two perspectives, in that a primary cultural approach might be accused of reducing lived social realities to just so much discourse.3 Weighing up these two tendencies, commentators on recent developments in both history and ethnography have expressed similar dissatisfactions, invoking the need for a primarily sociological perspective to enable broad comparisons over time,4 or noting the limitations of ‘symbolic’ studies which are ‘often remarkable, but partial’.5