Out of Bounds: Male Writers and Gender(ed) Criticism

by Laura Claridge (Editor)

Until recently, "masculinity" and its impact on literary production and reception have received scant attention in the field of literary criticism. Although critics certainly have been interested in examining gender, they have tended to be far more concerned with the "feminine" side of the equation than with the "masculine." This book is an attempt to redress that imbalance. Positing that patriarchy victimizes men as well as women, the fifteen original essays in Out of Bounds explore how certain male writers from the American and British canon have responded to the confines of the masculine code. The contributors apply a wide range of critical approaches and probe the gendered perspective in a variety of telling ways.

Paperback

First published December 1, 1990

About the author

Laura Claridge has written books ranging from feminist theory to biography and popular culture, most recently the story of an American icon, Emily Post: Daughter of the Gilded Age, Mistress of American Manners (Random House), for which she received a National Endowment for the Humanities grant. This project also received the J. Anthony Lukas Prize for a Work in Progress, administered by the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

Born in Clearwater, Florida, Laura Claridge received her Ph.D. in British Romanticism and Literary Theory from the University of Maryland in 1986. She taught in the English departments at Converse and Wofford colleges in Spartanburg, SC, and was a tenured professor of English at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis until 1997.

She has been a frequent writer and reviewer for the national press, appearing in such publications as The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, Vogue, Los Angeles Times, and the Christian Science Monitor. Her books have been translated into Spanish, German, and Polish. She has appeared frequently in the national media, including NBC, CNN, BBC, CSPAN, and NPR and such widely watched programs as the Today Show.

Laura Claridge’s biography of iconic publisher Blanche Knopf, The Lady with the Borzoi, will be published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux April, 2016.

Laura Claridge and her husband live in New York’s Hudson Valley.