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(Re)constructing Masculinity: Representations of Men and Masculinity in Australian Young Adult Literature

In this essay, I analyse how the representation of masculine discourses, and the dialogic processes at work between those present (or absent) function to support, to undermine or to challenge the current hegemonic masculinity in two Australian Young Adult realist texts, David Metzenthen's Boys of Blood and Bone (2004) and Scot Gardner's Burning Eddy (2003). While various and viable masculine schemata, and the dialectical relations between them, may exist in society and be represented within a text, I argue that the masculine constructions which are represented and privileged in the chosen two texts ultimately perpetuate and support normative hegemonic masculinity, that is, masculinity which can be characterised by heterosexuality, a desire for mateship, a sense of responsibility or duty, actual or implicit misogyny, and an inability or unwillingness to express emotion and taciturnity (Romøren and Stephens 2002, p.220).