Oxford Men: Masculinity and Humour in Nineteenth-Century University Fiction

This thesis examines the intersection between masculinity and humour in nineteenth-century university fiction through a close analysis of five novels: 'Reginald Dalton', 'Loss and Gain', 'Tom Brown at Oxford', 'The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green', and 'Une Culotte'. Ranging from 1823-1894, this selection of novels set in correlation to Oxford University offers a pathway to investigate how understandings of masculinity are formulated and changed across the century, and how humour reflects and reveals these shifts. This thesis contends that the university setting offers a distinct space for investigating formations of masculine ideals and the norms, behaviours, expectations, and codes that vary and change in representation between these selected works. Each novel is analysed individually, and I also draw out the significance of their shared Oxford setting and undergraduate protagonists, as well as their stylistic, thematic, and tonal commonalities and differences. This approach to the conversation surrounding nineteenth-century masculinity considers how humour impacts the ways manhood and male homosocial bonds are presented in university literature. Through an intersectional examination of humour, gender, and university fiction, this analysis seeks to explore how distinct ideals of masculinity constructed through university homosociality are staged, explored, challenged, or reinforced through modes of humour. The male and female protagonists in each of the five novels grapple with conforming to an ‘Oxford Man’ ideal, which prompts questions regarding how Oxford offers its own expectations of manhood distinguished by wealth, religious beliefs, social class, behaviours, and appearance.