Phallic Critiques (Routledge Revivals)

Phallic Critiques, first published in 1984, is a study of ‘masculine’ styles of writing in the twentieth century – an age, according to Virginia Woolf, when ‘virility has become self-conscious’. Writers who carry macho values to their extreme often subscribe to the popular feeling that writing is an effeminate activity for a real man to be engaged in. Consequently they attempt to forge ‘masculine’ style of writing in an effort to redeem language from its sexually suspect nature. These styles rev