Masculinity in late medieval England, defined as the period 1350–1530, or from the Black Death to the Reformation, is not about sex but about society. Derek G. Neal's goal is to bridge what he rightly sees as a gap between historical and literary studies of masculinity. Rather than revisiting aristocracy or chivalry, Neal examines the lives of everyday people for whom documentation exists (a challenge he readily acknowledges). Masculinity emerges as a social identity defined by “truth” between men: honesty, openness, faithfulness.

Using cases from diocese and chancery records, Neal lucidly illuminates the conflicts that arose when masculinity explicitly and implicitly came into question. Chapter 1, “False Thieves and True Men,” defines the masculine social self. Public acts such as pledging and tithing took place between men, with one man being responsible to other men for his behavior. A true man dealt openly with others and was, ideally, that open and honest in reality. When slandered by charges of knavery, thievery, or whoremongering, this self needed defending, for not only could insults threaten a man's livelihood but also he would have been perceived as unmanly if he did not defend himself publicly.

Chapter 2, “Husbands and Priests,” builds upon these ideas to discuss the seemingly opposite roles of husbands and clergymen. Careful to define terms here as elsewhere, Neal considers husbandry as behavior in marriage and in the now archaic sense of keeping one's household. Good husbandry involved controlled management of self and “substance”: material goods and people within the household (wife, children, servants). If a man took substance away from others, through extortion or adultery, he not only proved to be an unmanly thief but also diminished his self by overspending it. While one might expect the blaming of women as seductresses to be discussed, instead Neal persuasively argues that adultery threatens the masculinity of both men involved. Sex is thus a symbolic act, with the motivations being more important than the physical act itself. The body is not the focal point but is one of the foci of desire. The clergymen is not exempt from such a view; in fact, Neal argues that vows of celibacy have been overemphasized and that clergymen's experience of manhood was not so different from laymen’s. Clergymen were affected by the pressures that accompanied “substance” because they, too, depended upon it and thus had a social self to maintain as godparents, creditors, private chaplains, and contact with tradespeople and servants.

Lest he be accused of defining gender as exclusively social, in chapter 3, “Sex and Gender: The Meaning of the Male Body,” Neal clarifies that gender does have a significant bodily connection. A body should look and perform like a man’s, but “sexual acts were only the most specifically charged of such functions” (125). Sex with women, like activities of husbandry discussed in chapter 2, should be moderate. Using courtesy books for support, he argues that sex and genitals were parts of a man's reputation, as their control depended upon social regulation. Clothing is also covered in this chapter, although sumptuary laws are relegated to a footnote, in favor of satirical literature on fashion. Given his interest in the particular words related to masculinity in previous chapters, the last section of chapter 3 reasonably discusses controlling one's tongue; as before, restraint was manly, whereas verbal fumbling, sexual boasting, insulting others, or being a “harlot of the tongue” (loose-tongued) was detrimental. The chapter concludes with a coherent statement of purpose for the whole book: “to inspire and refresh thinking about the relation between maleness and masculine identity: a relation not defined by written ideals, but nevertheless involving them” (186).

An agile analysis of history, literature, and secondary sources emerges in chapter 4, “Toward the Private Self: Desire, Masculinity, and Middle English Romance.” Some may question the use of romance literature, with its focus on chivalric characters, where the book has until this point favored the working class. Nonetheless, there is careful explanation of how literature illuminates history. Offering a psychological dimension that texts such as legal documents do not, romances, like fantasies and dreams, express cultural desires. The stereotypical, unoriginal nature of medieval romances additionally contributes to their usefulness; because they retell material that has been told by others, they offer insight into a culturally unconscious fantasy that a socially defined masculinity can be cast aside. Using a revised psychoanalytic approach, Neal discusses texts from the lesser studied Partonope of Blois to the well-known Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. The romances dramatize conflicts within a subject's masculine identity, most often those involving not only the mother, via the Oedipus complex, but also those related to the father. The subconscious conflicts of the literary subject (a term he prefers to protagonist) often go unresolved, and his narcissism transfers desire onto others. This conflict is perhaps resolved in Ywain and Gawain when Ywain's madness in response to a conflict between social (knight) and private (lover) selves ultimately leads him to relate to, rather than project onto, others.

The book's conclusion offers a concise summary, acknowledging that these concepts are starting points for conceptualizing late medieval masculinity. More space is, indeed, opened through this book that will no doubt challenge historians and literary scholars alike to reconsider not only the idea of manliness discussed herein but also the role of social desire and the usefulness of psychoanalysis. Certainly gender historians will be intrigued by Neal's arguments. Given the evidence presented from literature, it will also be thought provoking to literary scholars who are reconsidering gender, especially in the emergent middle class from Chaucer's time forward.