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 reveal much about the ambiguous and paradoxical attitudes of men towards their...
Phallic Critiques, first published in 1984, is a study of ‘masculine’ styles of writing in the twentieth century – an age, according to Virgi...
