Hero and Anti-Hero in the American Football Novel: Changing Conceptions of Masculinity from the 19th Century to the 21st Century

This book features an examination of the rise and evolution of the football narrative (1870 to present) in order to analyze and define the process by which American men have sought to fashion masculine identity over the last century. The athletic hero functions as a representative of a larger number of templates or centers (the religious man, the business tycoon, the family man, the rebel, etc), many of which have been used by various men to make meaning of their lives. By using the literature as a lens through which to examine the center of the athletic hero, the author concludes that the process of masculinity that most men have been working through via athletic and other centers can be termed "ironic resistance", a condition which features the creation, elevation and maintenance of various centers due to a number of cultural factors that men adopt as a basis for their identity, then question, and then fully resist. However, because they have no other workable alternatives, men wind up in an ironic, circular, sometimes destructive process: at the same time rejecting and clinging to the only centers they see available to them.