The Image of Man: The Creation of Modern Masculinity was published by Oxford University Press in 1996, Mosse’s last major work and the culmination of his lifelong interest in the relationship between nationalism, sexuality, and the politics of the body. The book traces the history of the modern masculine ideal from its origins in the eighteenth century to its crisis in the late twentieth century.
Mosse argues that the ideal of masculinity that dominated modern European culture — strong, restrained, courageous, heterosexual, physically disciplined, emotionally controlled — was not a natural expression of male biology but a historical creation, constructed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to serve specific social and political purposes. This ideal was intimately connected to nationalism: the ideal man was also the ideal citizen-soldier, and masculinity was defined in national terms.
Those who failed to meet the standard — homosexuals, Jews, the disabled, the physically “degenerate” — were excluded from full national membership. The “counter-types” (Mosse’s term for those defined as masculine failures) served to define the norm by contrast: you knew what a real man was by seeing what he was not.
The book brings together themes Mosse had explored throughout his career — nationalism, racism, sexuality, the body, popular culture — into a single synthetic argument. It was published when Mosse was eighty, and it demonstrates that his intellectual energy and his capacity for original argument remained undiminished.
Collecting The Image of Man
First edition (Oxford University Press, New York, 1996): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition in dust jacket: $15–$40
- Without jacket: $5–$12