ABSTRACT
According to Karner (1998) narratives are more than ‘simply a mirror of life events’. This is because ‘they are embedded in temporal, geographical, political, cultural field – all of which lend shape and form to the narration, life stories allow social scientists a view of individuals and society in which the narrators act out their lives’ (p. 8). I agree with this; narratives are more than a mirror of life and for me they were pivotal and the means by which I sought to analyse the masculinity of the British soldiers who fought in the South African War (1899–1902, from now referred to as the SAW). The challenge faced was to develop a method for archival retrieval and interrogation that would enable significant themes to be drawn from the soldiers’ letters and diaries, central to the theme of masculinity in the context of their experience of the SAW. The emphasis for me was to step outside the orthodoxy of reporting/analysing historical narratives and reinvigorate the process with a creative analysis predicated on a ‘tool kit’ I created which incorporated a thematic analytical core over-layered with a sociologically derived theoretical framework.
