Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Note on Primary Sources -- Introduction -- 1 False Thieves and True Men -- Masculine Identity Formation in a Society of Stresses -- The Unknown Majority -- Manhood in the Towns -- Livelihood, Reputation, and Conflict -- False Thieves -- The Language of the Common Voice (and Fame) -- True Men -- Ideal and Reality -- The Legal Rhetoric of Masculinity -- 2 Husbands and Priests -- Husbandry (I): Pollers, Extorcioners, and Adulterers -- Substance -- Pollers and Extorcioners -- Polling, Cutting, and Loss of Substance -- Adulterers -- Husbandry (II): The Household from Inside -- Adulteresses -- Wives and Servants -- Priests versus Husbands, Priests as Husbands -- Clergy in English Society -- Conflict -- The Social Meaning of Celibacy -- The Rector and the Bailiff -- Clergymen and the Household -- Blaming the Friars -- Celibacy and Gender Identity: What Was the Real Problem? -- 3 Sex and Gender: the Meanings of the Male Body -- From Physiology to Personality -- Medieval Maleness: Form and Meaning -- Manliness and Attractiveness -- From Phallus to Penis (or Vice Versa?) -- Husbandly Sexuality -- An Incomplete Husband -- The Male Body in Action -- The Uses of Misrule -- Dress -- The Dangers of the Tongue -- 4 Toward the Private Self: Desire, Masculinity, and Middle English Romance -- History, Fiction, and Literature -- The Literary Subject -- The Romance of Masculinity -- All Her Fault -- The Dangers of Desire -- Narcissistic Masculinity and the Rape of Melior -- Mothers -- Lovers Invisible and Unspeakable -- Fathers Unknown and Forbidden -- The Father Unknown: Bevis of Hampton -- Better the Nightmare You Know: Lybeaus Desconus -- Father Forbidden, Father Created: Of Arthour and of Merlin -- Emplotted Desire: Sir Perceval of Galles -- Desire and Dread: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight -- Beyond Narcissism? Ywain and Gawain.

Conclusion -- What Has This Historian Done with Masculinity? -- Chronology -- The Other Half -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index.