Van Dulken, Stephen.Inventing the Twentieth Centur y:
One Hundred Inventions That Shaped the World—
From the Airplane to the Zipper. Introduction by An-
drew Phillips. Washington Square, N.Y.: New York
University Press, 2000. Chapter focusing on the
1990’s describes ten inventions, including images
or text from patent applications and details rele-
vant to each invention’s creation.
Elizabeth D. Schafer
See also Automobile industry; Business and the
economy in the United States; Cloning; Computers;
Genetics research; Hackers; Human Genome Proj-
ect; Internet; MP3 format; Nanotechnology; Phar-
maceutical industry; Science and technology; Sili-
con Valley; World Wide Web.
Iron John
Identification Mythopoetic men’s movement
book
Author Robert Bly (1926- )
Date Published in 1990
Bly’s book, an international best seller that has been trans-
lated into many languages, is credited with starting the
mythopoetic (pertaining to myths) men’s movement in the
United States, including workshops and retreats for men
led by Bly, Michael J. Meade, James Hillman, and others,
as well as hundreds of other men’s support groups nation-
wide.
The titleIron Johnis derived from a legend set down
by the Brothers Grimm in Germany in 1820, but
which American poet Robert Bly believes could be
many thousands of years old. It is a story of a hairy
wild man found in a deep pool in a forest, captured
and imprisoned in an iron cage in the courtyard of a
king’s house and liberated by the king’s eight-year-
old son, whom the wild man takes into the forest,
tests in three trials (which the boy fails), and sends
out into the world. The king’s son endures reverses
and rises in his fortune, finally ending up in true
fairy-tale fashion recognized as a royal and married
to a king’s daughter. Through his triumph, he liber-
ates from an enchantment the wild man, who turns
out to be a rich and powerful king himself.
The term “wild man,” according to Bly, carries
with it an enormous amount of historical informa-
tion, which he details through mythology, theology,
psychology, and literature from many cultures
through ancient and modern times, all of which add
to and explain each other. Bly uses progressive por-
tions of the tale of the wild man/Iron John as a meta-
phor for different stages of masculine development
necessary if modern males are to regain their true
direction and their lost vitality.
The book was an immediate success, topping the
charts for ten weeks and remaining on the best seller
list for a year. It is credited with sparking the men’s
movement, in which Bly, Michael J. Meade, James
Hillman, and others conducted their own weekend
retreats, using poems, fairy tales, and myths to teach
men to get in touch with themselves and replace pas-
sivity with power. In the preface of his book and in in-
terviews, Bly emphasizes his support of the women’s
movement and denies encouraging subjugation of
women. Nevertheless, feminists charged that the
movement was misogynist, the media made fun of it,
and some critics felt it was based on and designed for
a small and select group of white well-to-do men.
Bly is characterized as a poet, author, translator,462 Iron John The Nineties in America
Robert Bly.(AP/Wide World Photos)