The Emotional Body: Religion and Male Friendship at Oxford

This chapter explores the transformative role played by Oxford in Harry’s life, when this aspiring clergyman took up his Rhodes Scholarship in the years just prior to World War I. It shows how this moralistic and priggish young man was introduced to new ideas from the fields of psychology, the psychology of religion and Hellenism, which drastically reshaped his sense of values. By exposing him to new concepts of interiority, the value of emotions and the importance of personal friendships, his studies together with his participation in the Student Christian Movement pushed him to question orthodox Christianity and to embrace new concepts of masculinity which challenged dominant notions of military and imperial manhood.