| This dissertation examines how the aesthetic, sexual, and gendered concerns of men's highly wrought compares with contemporary women writers. While both men and women writers remain preoccupied with similar issues surrounding gender, desire, and reform, men's fiction departs from this shared project in the manner in which they focus on issues of manhood and masculinity. My dissertation calls attention to how male authors' use of the highly wrought style, a literary aesthetic traditionally associated with women's fiction, to explore heterodox masculine desire and imagination in 19th century America. |
