So before #COVID19 ruined the best laid plans of mice & men, I was to speak at #SDNBelfast2020 today. This was my only conference for the foreseeable ( #precarity), so I thought I'd share some thoughts from my paper in tweet form! Credit to @BAIrishStudies for giving me the idea!

My paper was entitled 'The (Im)potency of the Pen(is): The Crisis of Masculinity in Octave Mirbeau’s Le Calvaire (1886)' and tackled the concept of male impotency - both aesthetic and sexual/physical in Decadent fiction at the fin de siècle.

Gilbert and Gubar famously asked if the pen was actually a penis, wrapping up ideas of masculinity and creative potential; but if the pen is a penis, then it can malfunction like any other bodily appendage, and what does that mean for the man wielding it?

'Le Calvaire' is often taken to be Octave Mirbeau's debut novel (of note), and one that intersperses autobiographical details - particularly in the figure of Juliette, the lover of the protagonist Jean. Many assume that Juliette was based on Mirbeau's own experience of heartbreak

Many critics associate the introduction of Juliette into the novel with the increasing impotence that Jean experiences, but impotence marks Jean from the outset of the narrative. He struggles with the expectations that his father, the Church, &the Military have for him.

Indeed, 'successful' Patriarchal masculinity itself is demonstrated throughout to be a myth, through the madness of Jean's father, the devastating defeat of France in the FP war, and the death of the Breton fisherman who Jean idolises.

Don't know why the end of the thread ended up branching off, but to satisfy my own OCD, here's how it should have followed on from the above