Boxing: A Cultural History - Couverture souple

Boddy, Kasia

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 1861894112 ISBN 13 : 9781861894113

Editeur : Reaktion Books, 2009

Synopsis

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.

A propos du livre

Présentation de l'éditeur :

Boxing is one of the oldest and most physical of sports, its visceral appeal lying in the stark struggle for dominance through the brutal silencers of fists and pain. The permeation of boxing into Western culture is the subject of Kasia Boddy's fascinating and comprehensive investigation. From ancient Greece to the present day, Boddy charts the myriad incarnations of the sport in Western society and the larger-than-life figures who have played pivotal roles in its history. Boxing traces the portrayal of the sport in literature and media, from Greek odes to hip-hop lyrics to silent films, and shows the sport to be a complex cultural act that transforms the voyeur into a participant. Artists and writers have long employed the boxer as their primitive muse and Boddy explores the role of the boxer in the works of writers such as Norman Mailer, Charles Dickens, Ralph Ellison and William Hazlitt, as well as its artistic renderings in neo-classical sculpture, comic books and films such as the Rocky series and Raging Bull. Boxing has also played an important role in social history, as the sport has been a provocative touchstone in politics, race and ethnicity, economics and masculinity through public acclaim or excoriation of legends such as Jack Dempsey, Muhammad Ali, Jack Johnson and Lennox Lewis. Whether as a leisured eighteenth-century pastime of British gentlemen, a crime-shadowed commercial enterprise or a rough pursuit of blue-collar and immigrant workers, boxing is ultimately a theatrical ritual, one in which fundamental oppositions of might, mind and experience clash viciously. An engrossing and readable sport history, this book draws the reader into the world of the boxing ring and exposes its ever-evolving place in our cultural consciousness.

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 serious yet entertaining study, packed with obscure facts and accompanied by a huge selection of marvellous photos and illustrations.' --Marcel Berlins, The Guardian

'The merit of Kasia Boddy's meticulously researched and deeply intelligent examination of boxing through the ages is that it refuses to take the pop historian's route of lazy simplification. The political and moral ambiguity of the fights that have played such a seminal role in shaping human consciousness are chronicled in all their rich and equivocal detail ... her volume is one of the most intelligent sporting books of recent times.' --The Times

À propos de cette édition

• Éditeur: Reaktion Books
• Date d'édition: 2009
• ISBN 10: 1861894112
• ISBN 13: 9781861894113
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 480