Masculinity and Ancient Rome in the Victorian Cultural Imagination

Masculinity and Ancient Rome in the Victorian Cultural Imagination examines Victorian receptions of ancient Rome, with a specific focus on how those receptions were deployed to create useable models of masculinity. Romans in Victorian literature are at once pagan persecutors, pious statesmen, pleasure-seeking decadents, and heroes of empire, and these manifold and often contradictory representations are used as vehicles equally to capture the martial virtue of Wellington and to condemn the deviance and degeneracy of Oscar Wilde. In the works of Thomas Macaulay, Wilkie Collins, Anthony Trollope, H. Rider Haggard, and Rudyard Kipling, among others, Rome emerges as a contested space with an array of possible scripts and signifiers which can be used to frame masculine ideals, or to vilify perceived deviance from those ideals, though with a value and significance often very different to ancient Greek models. Sitting at the intersection of reception studies, gender studies, and interdisciplinary literary and cultural studies across discourses ranging from education and politics, this volume offers the first comprehensive examination of the importance of ancient Rome as a cultural touchstone for nineteenth-century manliness and Victorian codifications of masculinity.

Laura Eastlake is Senior Lecturer in English Literature at Edge Hill University, having previously taught English and Classics at the University of Glasgow. Her research focuses on nineteenth-century masculinities and how Victorian writers like Wilkie Collins, Anthony Trollope, Rudyard Kipling, and Oscar Wilde used the ancient world to construct different styles of manliness. She has published on decadent masculinities of the fin de siècle and Wilkie Collins's little-known first novel Antonina. She is also the Public Engagement Officer for the Classical Reception Studies Network (CRSN) and an Editor of the Wilkie Collins Journal.

- Frontmatter
- List of Illustrations
- 0: Introduction
- Part I: Classical Education and Manliness in the Nineteenth Century
- 1: Reading, Reception, and Elite Education
- 2: Imperial Boys and Men of Letters
- Part II: Political Masculinity in the Age of Reform
- 3: Napoleonic Legacies and the Reform Act of 1832
- 4: Caesar, Cicero, and Anthony Trollope's Public Men
- Part III: Imperial Manliness
- 5: Liberal Imperialism and Wilkie Collins's Antonina
- 6: New Imperialism and the Problem of Cleopatra
- Part IV: Decadent Rome and Late-Victorian Masculinity
- 7: Rome, London, and Condemning the Metropolitan Male
- 8: The Decadent Imagination: Nero, Pater, and Wilde
- Conclusion: 'Be Prepared' - Ancient Rome and the Modern Man, 1900-1918
- Endmatter
- Bibliography
- Index