This study examines British literature from the early Victorian period to the early Twentieth Century. What I have done within this dissertation of this study is trace how the muscular Christian became what I will refer to as a dominant masculine model. My assertion of this model does not preclude the existence of other masculinities, but, and I feel safe in saying so, that the second half of the nineteenth century saw the "muscular Christian," in its different variants, dominate the masculine discourse as it pertained to institutions of education, Empire, the military, and professionalism in England. In argue that the muscular Christian's rise to dominance coincided with a revolution in the practice and play of sport in England that began in the 1840s. Older forms of sport, such as prizefighting, horse racing, and other sports that centered on gambling, began to recede in a Victorian England in which a new middle class that prioritized morality and propriety came to dominate. While these seemingly vulgar sporting practices did not vanish, other forms of sport, and new discourses about these forms, came into being. As these new sporting forms emerged, the discourse around them became centralized in the figure of the muscular Christian.

The dissertation examines both how the muscular Christian rose to prominence in Victorian England and then becomes problematic during the early years of the Twentieth Century, particularly during WWI. The historical forces that not only made the muscular Christian possible but made it the exemplar of British masculinity became obsolete; the new historical forces shifted the discursive ground on which the muscular Christian was founded. As a result, the muscular Christian became unstable.

Throughout the entirety of this study, I root my examination in the textual analysis of literary texts Victorian and early Twentieth Century British Literature. Each chapter focuses on a particular author or set of authors: chapter 1, J.K. Rowling, chapter 2, William Makepeace Thackeray; chapters 3 and 4, Thomas Hughes; chapter 5, Charles Dickens: chapter 6, Ford Madox Ford; chapter 7, Siegfried Sassoon; chapter 8, Edgar Rice Burroughs and Jack London.