ABSTRACT
The seismic socio-cultural transmutations of twentieth and twenty-rstcentury Spain recongured masculinity, producing and sanctioning prototypes of manliness, which were then challenged and eventually rendered anachronistic by emergent forms of masculinity. In the Francoist era, men were expected to conform to a patriarchal ideal of breadwinner while transitional culture, for example the lms of José Sacristán, extolled the urbane “man about town”. In the 1980s, entrepreneurial masculinity, emblematized by “el triunfador”, was exalted. Although cultural representations have validated prototypical norms of masculinity, they have also been instrumental in challenging hegemonic masculinity by thematizing the exclusionary biases of patriarchal and neoliberal masculinity (Los lunes al sol), the baleful consequences of machismo for personal relationships (Te doy mis ojos), and acrimonious father-son relationships (Los disparos del cazador). The representation of the distortion of men’s subjectivity by inexible and politicized masculine injunctions in works such as En la orilla, Un día volveré, Luna de lobos, and Los girasoles ciegos has further contributed to the destabilization of normative masculinity. Evidently, several variations of masculinity have dominated in the period from 1939 to the present day, and consequently, this volume proposes to analyse the contemporary cultural representation of the chameleonic nature of masculinity in Spain.
