Sport and the Spirit of Play in American Fiction : : Hawthorne to Faulkner / / Christian Messenger.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter CUP eBook Package Archive 1898-1999 (pre Pub)
• VerfasserIn: Messenger, Christian,
• Place / Publishing House: New York, NY : : Columbia University Press, , [1983]; ©1983
• Year of Publication: 1983
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource

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.

Table of Contents

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