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Being The Bigger Ram: Arable Vs Pastoral Masculinities In The Towneley Mactacio Abel, Daisy E. Black

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

This article addresses the construction of rural masculine identities through a study of the Towneley manuscript play Mactacio Abel (The Killing of Abel) and the relationships the play stages between human, animal, and land. It argues that the Mactacio Abel places pastoral and arable agricultural labor in competition through the play’s two brothers, and that this competition takes the form of a gendered attack on the masculinity of each. The article begins with Cain’s arable farming and how the character’s antagonistic relationship with the earth hints at his failures as laborer and as a man. It examines Cain’s …