This book examines the representation of masculinity in late Elizabethan verse satire. Discussing satirists like Donne and Marston, it suggests that manhood as represented in their writing often existed in tension with patriarchal norms of self-control, violence and husbandry.

Per Sivefors is Associate Professor of English Literature at Linnaeus University, Sweden.

Introduction: Satire and Masculinity 1. John Donne's Satires and the Precariousness of Masculine Self-Control 2. Violence and the Male in John Marston's Certaine Satyres and The Scourge of Villanie 3. The Failure of Husbandry in Joseph Hall's Virgidemiarum 4. Age and Manhood in Everard Guilpin's Skialetheia. Coda: The Ban on Satire and the Representation of Masculinity