This is a collection of essays on the subject of fatherhood: its enduring power, its secret ruses, and unsettling provocations.

Naming the Father is a collection of essays on the subject of fatherhood: its enduring power, its secret roses, its unsettling provocations. Despite the considerable critical attention devoted to motherhood in literature -- and despite the late-twentieth-century focus on patriarchy -- there is surprisingly no comparable collection on fatherhood. This volume was born of the conclusion that critics of modern and contemporary literature may comprehend the father too little for presuming to have comprehended patriarchy so much.