Whole men

Kai Jensen takes a provocative look at masculinity in New Zealand literature. He argues that New Zealand writing around the Second World War was shaped by excitement about masculinity as a way of challenging society. Inspired partly by Marxism, writers such as A.R.D. Fairburn, Denis Glover, John Mulgan and Frank Sargeson linked national identity to the ordinary working man or soldier, and attempted to merge artistic activity and manliness in a new ideal, the whole man. This masculine excitement forged a literary and intellectual culture which was powerful for thirty years, and which…