La subversión del gentleman. Cuerpo y belleza en el ethos Victoriano

Abstract

Ever since the importance acquired in the Victorian age to define gender stereotypes, the authors analize the debate emerged in the last period of the nineteenth century and especially in the Oxonian colleges, questioning the prevailing model of manhood represented by the prototype of the gentleman. This contention, supported by new aesthetic-artistic trends and focused on the texts of authors like Walter Horatio Pater, John Addington Symonds and Oscar Wilde, made possible a sort of new open-mindedness and a rupture of hegemonic masculinity ideals governed by a scheme where gender binary determined sexual orientation, leaving it, circumscribed to the limits of heterosexuality.