The Allure of Sports in Western Culture

John Zilcosky, Marlo A. Burks (Herausgeber)

Buch | Hardcover

288 Seiten

2019
University of Toronto Press (Verlag)
978-1-4875-0418-2 (ISBN)

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Sports are the most popular spectator events in the history of the world. This volume demonstrates how sports shape societies and individuals. The essays offer critical new insights and historical case studies from historians, theorists, literature scholars, and athletes.

Whether it is our love of chance and vicarious thrill, our need to release anxiety and aggression, or our appreciation of the arc traced by a ball at a crucial moment – sports draw us in.

The Allure of Sports in Western Culture contributes to contemporary debates about the attraction of sports in the West by providing a historical grounding as well as theoretical perspectives and contextualization. Bringing together the work of literary theorists, historians, and athletes, the volume’s dual emphasis allows us to better understand the historical and ideological reasons for the changing nature of sports’ allure from Ancient Greece and Rome to the modern Olympics. The findings show that allure is shaped by larger forces such as poverty, wealth, and status; changing moral standards; and political and cultural indoctrination. On the other hand, personal and psychological factors play an equally important, if less tangible role: our love for scandal, the seduction of deception and violence, and the physiological intoxication of watching and participating in sports keep us hooked. At the heart of the volume lies the tension between our love of sport and our knowledge of its only barely hidden cruelty, exploitation, and manipulation.

John Zilcosky is a professor of German and Comparative Literature at the University of Toronto. Marlo Alexandra Burks is an independent scholar and recent postdoctoral Fellow in the Berlin Program for Advanced German and European Studies at the Freie Universität Berlin.

Acknowledgments

Part I: Introduction

Introduction: The Allure of Sports
John Zilcosky

Part II: Theoretical Perspectives

1. Sports/Allure
Grant Farred

2. "Allure" Constrained by "Ethics"? How Athletic Events Have Engaged Their Spectators
Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht

Part III: The Ancient World

3. The Fading Allure of Greek Athletics
Sophie Remijsen

4. Wrestling, or the Art of Disentangling Bodies
John Zilcosky

5. The Allure and Ethics of Ancient Aesthetics: Hellenism in the Modern Olympic Movement
Charles Stocking

Part IV: Modern Europe

6. Attractive or Repugnant? Foot Races in Eighteenth-Century Germany and Britain
Rebekka Von Mallinckrodt

7. A Well-Trained Community: Gymnastics for the German Nation
Wolf Kittler

8. Importing a German Kampfsport: The Reception and Practice of Japanese Martial Arts in Interwar Germany
Sarah Panzer

9. The Ethics and Allure of the Foul in Football
Annette Vowinckel

Part V: Coda

10. Swimming
Karin Helmstaedt

Contributors

Index

Erscheinungsdatum	22.11.2019
Verlagsort	Toronto
Sprache	englisch
Maße	152 x 231 mm
Gewicht	560 g
Themenwelt	Literatur ► Klassiker / Moderne Klassiker
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Archäologie
	Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► Mittelalter
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Anglistik / Amerikanistik
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Literaturwissenschaft
ISBN-10	1-4875-0418-7 / 1487504187
ISBN-13	978-1-4875-0418-2 / 9781487504182
Zustand	Neuware