“In Peter Pan’s Steps: Configurations of male identity in the contemporary English novel.”

«A11 children, except one, grow up», the beginning of Barrie's story, can't be considered a truthful sentence any longer. On the contrary, the boy who wouldn't grow up appears to be in good company nowadays. Many have followed his example. Novels, movies, even the news have made us accustomed to a new kind of eternal boy who resists maturity and defers the acquisition of adult status. But the refusal to grow up is not the only feature of the syndrome: Pan lurks behind the Puer. Separateness, inability to create durable relationships, even a tendency to solipsism; self-indulgence,egomania, predictability and automatism in behaviour, an attitude towards sex which can vary from a collector's passion to the incapability to sustain closeness, to conjugate intimacy with familiarity, to the extent of actual compulsiveness. The narratives of anglophone contemporary authors, such as Hornby, Kureishi, Amis and others are analysed to spot the symptoms of such syndrome.