A Masculine Romance: The sentimental bloke and Australian culture in the war - and early interwar years

Journal article

Bellanta, Melissa. (2014). A Masculine Romance: The sentimental bloke and Australian culture in the war - and early interwar years. Journal of Popular Romance Studies. 4(2), pp. 1 - 20.
AuthorsBellanta, Melissa
Abstract

The Sentimental Bloke was a hugely popular multi-media phenomenon in Australia during the First World War and early interwar years. I explore the work as a heterosexual “masculine romance”: a love story expressing heterosexual romantic feeling from a masculine point of view and in a self-consciously masculine way. The Bloke phenomenon demonstrates that “ordinary” Australian men were more interested in certain forms of romantic popular culture than previously allowed. It also points to the fact that avowedly masculine constructions of romantic feeling were emerging in this period in response to criticism of elaborate Victorian-era expressions of romance on the one hand, and of commodified approaches to romantic love on the other. This point has implications for romance studies, which has paid little attention to the concept or even the possibility of masculine romance. In Australia, there was an insistent emphasis on plainness and straightforwardness as the hallmarks of a sturdily masculine approach to romance in the 1910s and 1920s. My hope is that this discussion will prompt other romance scholars to consider the particular inflexions given to masculine constructions of romance in other localities in the same period.

KeywordsC. J. Dennis; gender of romantic love; masculinity; popular culture; Raymond Longford; sentimentality
Year2014
JournalJournal of Popular Romance Studies
Journal citation4 (2), pp. 1 - 20
ISSN2159-4473
Web address (URL)http://jprstudies.org/2014/10/a-masculine-romance-the-sentimental-bloke-and-australian-culture-in-the-war-and-early-interwar-yearsby-melissa-bellanta/
Open accessOpen access
Page range1 - 20
Research GroupSchool of Arts
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