Présentation de l'éditeur :
Boxing is one of the oldest and most exciting of sports: its bruising and bloody confrontations have permeated Western culture since 3000 B.C. During that period, there has hardly been a time in which young men, and sometimes women, did not raise their gloved or naked fists to one other. Throughout this history, potters, sculptors, painters, poets, novelists, cartoonists, song-writers, photographers and film-makers have been there to record and make sense of it all. In her encyclopaedic investigation of the shifting social, political and cultural resonances of this most visceral of sports, Kasia Boddy throws new light on an elemental struggle for dominance whose weapons are nothing more than fists. From Daniel Mendoza to Mike Tyson, boxers have embodied and enacted our anxieties about race, ethnicity, gender and sexuality. Looking afresh at everything from neo-classical sculpture to hip-hop lyrics, Boddy explores the way in which the history of boxing has intersected with the history of mass media, and sheds new light on the work of such diverse figures as Henry Fielding and Spike Lee, Charlie Chaplin and Philip Roth, James Joyce and Mae West, Bertolt Brecht and Charles Dickens. This all-encompassing study tells us just how and why boxing has mattered so much to so many.
Revue de presse :
'A treasure trove for boxing historians and aficionados . . . At nearly five hundred densely packed pages . . . Boxing: A Cultural History would seem to include everything that has ever been written, depicted or in any way recorded about boxing. . . . To read Boddy's book is to confront dozens - hundreds? - of inspired mini-essays.' --Joyce Carol Oates, The New York Review of Books
'A penetrating, sparky and powerfully intelligent work of artistic, sporting and cultural history . . . when you get to its final page you will find that you have not merely been entertained but enlightened, too. A literary knockout.' --The Times Sports Books of the Year
'Boddy explains why so many great writers and artists have been fascinated by the dark lure of boxing. With a cast of characters from Daniel Mendoza, DW Griffith, and James Joyce to Joe Louis, Bob Dylan, Muhammad Ali and Public Enemy she avoids pontification to mine a riveting history.' --Donald McRae, The Guardian Sports Books of the Year
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