Description
Book SynopsisThis edited volume gathers together studies examining various aspects of physical culture in literature written in French from Europe and around the Francophone world. We define physical culture as the systematic care for and development of the physique, and interpret it to include not only sport in the modern sense, but also all the athletic activities that preceded it or relate to it, such as bodily forms of exercise, leisure, and artistic creation. Our essays pursue diverse interpretive approaches and focus on texts from a wide variety of periods (medieval to the present) and genres (short stories, novels, essays, poetry) in order to consider the fundamentalyet highly neglectedplace of physical activities in literature and culture from the French-speaking world. Some of the questions the essays explore include: Does the genre sports literature exist in French, and if so, what are its characteristics? How do governments or other political entities mobilize sports literature? What r
