Author: Ewa Kowal, Instytut Filologii Angielskiej (Institute of English Studies), Uniwersytet Jagiellołski (Jagiellonian University) - Academia.edu, ORCID, ResearchGate

Abstract: »James Lasdun's pre-#MeToo novel The Horned Man (2002) tells the story of a British academic, Lawrence Miller, teaching Gender Studies at a college in upstate New York, where he is also a member of the Sexual Harassment Committee. Reflecting on sexual politics at a US university campus, and a broader "continental drift of the sexes", involving the "engineering [of] the New Male", Miller's first-person account both chronicles the changing reality in the West at the turn of the 21^st century, and departs from reality, as it becomes increasingly unreliable and Kafkaesque. Tracing the novel's intertextual and cultural references, the paper interprets the complicated and confusing tale of confusion, suspected conspiracy, mistaken and appropriated identity, cross-dressing and femicide as a symbolic expression of a struggle between "new" and "old" masculinity. Lasdun's prescient engagement with issues which in the "real world" had to wait almost two decades for the emergence of the #MeToo movement to become widely discussed is read from a feminist perspective as a representation of the ongoing tortuous process of transition towards more equitable gender relations.« (Source: Polish Journal of English Studies)

Wikipedia: History of the Americas: History of the United States / History of the United States (1991-2008) | Literature: American literature / James Lasdun | Literature: Fiction about rape | Sex and the law: Sexual assault Campus sexual assault