Contents -- Acknowledgements ix -- Key to Abbreviations xi -- Introduction 1 -- Chapter One - Bodies 21 -- 1. 'That great swollen belly': The Grotesque Feminine in the Northern Irish Imagination 21 -- 2. 'A televised account of your own death': The Problem of Gender and Vision in Northern Ireland 33 -- 3. 'I'm toxic, necrotic and inflamed': The Body Abject in Ripley Bogle 40 -- 4. 'Laid it open to the bone': The Hermeneutics of the Tortured Body in Resurrection Man 46 -- Chapter Two - Performances 53 -- 1. 'The Erotic Highstyle': Self Reflexivity and Performativity in Eureka Street and Ripley Bogle 53 -- 2. 'Some unrelenting protagonist': Postmodern 'Hard Men' in the Novels of Jason Johnson and Eoin McNamee 65 -- 3. 'The Unpleasantness': Homophobia and the Homoerotic in Northern Irish Fiction 79 -- 4. The Sins of the Father: Patriarchy, Masculinity and Fatherhood 92 -- Chapter Three - Violence 109 -- 1. 'Our thoughts and deeds turn to violence': Problematising Male Violence in the Northern Irish Novel 109 -- 2. 'These men were bred for such work and dispatched to administer territories across the empire': Military Violence in Northern Ireland 121 -- 3. 'An absence in this story': Masculinity and Victimhood 127 -- 4. 'South Belfast's Concerned Classes': The Battle for Hegemonic Masculinity in Transitional Northern Ireland 134 -- Conclusion 141 -- Appendices (Interviews on Masculinity with Robert McLiam Wilson, Glenn Patterson and Eoin McNamee) 147 -- Bibliography 163 -- Index 179.