Sport and the Spirit of Play in American Fiction - Hawthorne to Faulkner

In this comprehensive and insightful study, Christian K. Messenger contends that American writers have always created characters at play in the sure knowledge that to be active in sport in America is to be in touch with its people, their traditions, and their fantasy lives.

This is the first inclusive critical study of sport in American fiction with chapters on individual authors such as Hawthorne, Lardner, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and Faulkner, as well as studies of sport in the literature of the frontier and in boys' formula fiction. A work of literary criticism, Sport and the Spirit of Play in American Fiction also draws on the cultural history of American sport and leisure and on a century of American literature.

List of contents

Preface
Introduction
Play, Game, Sport
Models of Sports Heroism
Part I: Play, Game, Sport: Classic American Literature
1. Hawthorne: The Play Spirit
2. Sport and Society
Part II: The Popular Sports Hero
3. Sport and the Frontier
4. Organized Sport and Its Reporters
5. Lardner: The Popular Sports Hero
Part III: The School Sports Hero
6. The Incarnation of the College Athletic Hero
7. The Boys' School Sports Story
8. Fitzgerald: The School Sports Hero
9. The School Sports Hero as Satiric Emblem: Hemingway and Faulkner
Part IV: The Modern Ritual Sports Hero
10. Hemingway: Exemplary Heroism and Heroic Witnessing
11. Faulkner: The Play Spirit
12. Sports Approaches the Sacred: Hemingway and Faulkner
Conclusion
Notes
Index

About the author

Christian K. Messenger

Product details

• Authors: Christian Messenger, Christian K. Messenger
• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 31.05.1983
• EAN: 9780231051699
• ISBN: 978-0-231-05169-9
• No. of pages: 369
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative literary studies; SPORTS & RECREATION / History, LITERARY CRITICISM / American / General, 20th century, c 1900 to c 1999, Literature: history & criticism, United States of America, USA, Literary studies: c 1900 to c 2000