A Patriot for Men: The Politics of Masculinity in John Osborne's "A Patriot for Me"

By applying David Savran’s scholarship on the politics of masculinity to John Osborne’s play <em>A Patriot for Me </em>(1965), I demonstrate that Osborne exemplified contradictory sexual politics in the play, and was criticized as homophobic and praised as revolutionary in similarly contradictory original reviews. I argue that play very much typifies the heteronormative politics of masculinity by placing a dominant homosexual (Redl) as protagonist, and inverts the positions of the period woman and the staged effeminate man. Redl is historically represented as a heroic homosexual, but is actually a heteronormative object. I provide evidence for this interpretation by employing Savran to conduct a close reading of the play <em>A Patriot for Me</em>. I also provide in my Conclusion an analysis of a notebook in the Osborne archives, purported by biographer John Heilpern to be simply notes for <em>A Patriot for Me</em>, but which actually contain many private ruminations on Osborne’s sexual politics that shed light on his thoughts concerning homosexuality.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Arts (MA)

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Theatre Studies

Year dc:date.available

2016

Author dc:creator

• Kelly, Joshua

Contributors dc:contributor

• Jay Ball
• Mark Auslander
• George Bellah

• John Osborne
• A Patriot for Me
• David Savran
• theatre
• masculine politics
• homosexual
• Dramatic Literature, Criticism and Theory
• Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Studies
• Other Theatre and Performance Studies
• Theatre History

Language dc:language

English

Repository record dc:identifier

https://digitalcommons.cwu.edu/etd/360

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:digitalcommons.cwu.edu:etd-1372