Please join us this Thursday evening, November 17, from 6-8 pm, in the Collaboration Center Room 122 at Knight Library on the UO campus for our Fall Colloquium

Pizza and other food will be served.

Folklore Graduate student Mary Kupsch will present

The Prince, the Punisher, and the Perpetrator: An Analysis of Different Displays of Masculinities in Animal/Monster Groom Tales

Abstract:

Stories of animal/monster groom are folktales/fairy tales that follow a specific tale type. In the story, a young woman is married to, betrothed to, or courted by a man whose physical body takes on a form that is animal like or in some way monstrous. This project uses a textual analysis paired with the theory of multiple dominate masculinities to examine 1) how the animal/monster grooms in these types of tales enact their masculinity 2) the ways in which animal/monster grooms strive to become members of a dominate masculinity and 3) how the actions of the other characters in the story effect how animal/monster grooms maintain or attempt to rise above their level of masculinity. By observing how animal monster grooms display, maintain, and prove their masculinity as well as the actions taken by them to rise to a level of dominate masculinity, it becomes obvious that, in order to do any of these things, animal/monster grooms are restricted to three stereotypical roles. Furthermore, these characters are most often not in control of which role they will be required to take on if the alternative to achieving a dominate masculinity or, at the very least, maintaining a subordinate masculinity, is to be stripped of their masculinity altogether. By examining these roles and how specific characters find themselves enacting them, we can apply the same method of observation to our own society to see how the young men of America are restricted as to which role they can display based on their masculinity and the actions taken by those around them.

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