Sport Literature

In her preface to The Wolves (2018), while explicitly asserting the play is not about her own personal experience—“I did not play soccer in high school”—Sarah DeLappe claims, as writers of sport literature sometimes claim of their own works, that her play “is not really about soccer” (DeLappe 9).  DeLappe does develop themes which reach beyond the sports field, about teens being forced to see the reality of a harsh world outside “the bubble” of sheltered lives; as DeLappe puts it, “they are desperate to understand themselves and the world around them, but they can only see so far” (DeLappe 9).  After reading the play and seeing it performed at the University of Kansas in December 2019 (DeLappe, The Wolves), however, I must say, this is an outstanding play because it manages to bring sport onto the stage more effectively than any sports play I’m familiar with has done before.  In fact, from the moment the play opens until it ends with the players chanting “We are the Wolves” (DeLappe, The Wolves 175), the characters and the play’s audience always connect on the playing field itself.

truths about our national character, our human nature, our past, and our future. But most are momentary diversions, easily forgotten. All but the avid fans of Ripken and Sandberg would put Iron Man and Second to Home in the latter category. Christopher Moinet Dick Vitale with Dick Weiss. Holding Court: Reflections on the Game I hove. Indianapolis: Masters, 1995. 271 pp. $22.95. John Feinstein. Winter Games. Boston: Little, 1995. 277 pp. $21.95. In his Introduction, Vitale stresses his "passion and enthusiasm" for basketball, and what ESPN viewer couldn't sense that in listening to the typical Vitale commentary? However, I felt less than enthusiastic about this book. Filled with tributes to coaches such as Krzyzewski, Richardson, Sutton, Pitino, Wooden, Knight, and, of course, Jim Harrick (of the great 1995 tourney run); crammed with pencil-thin sketches of "PTPers" (

Soccer is an account that the supporter needs to keep in his memory. Literature provides the football with the creation of a symbolic universe that transcends the events of the field. This paper presents an overview through the soccer narrative in Spanish of 21st century, highlighting its main dynamics, authors and works. Short story and novel coexist during these years with hybrid forms between the essay and fiction. Writers on both sides of the Atlantic consolidate the literary treatment of soccer as a source of aesthetic and sentimental inquiry. The goal, for most of them, can be epiphany, passion and metaphor.

On 22 June 1986, Diego Armando Maradona scored against England
one of the most famous goals in the history of football, known as “The Goal of the Century”. This paper proposes an approach to the mythical figure of Argentine soccer player from the analysis of three fictional stories that recreate in detail this episode: “Maradona sí, Galtieri no”, by Osvaldo Soriano; “Me van a tener que disculpar” by Eduardo Sacheri; and “10.6 segundos”, by Hernán Casciari. The dual nature of the hero fits to the Maradona’s portrait offered in these texts. His journey and quest is inserted in the imaginary using archetypal and literary motifs.

C ontrapunto nació, hace dos años y medio, con la intención de informar acerca de los derroteros de nuestro campo cultural, de crear espacios de diálogo y de reflexión sobre la cultura y la literatura actuales y de fomentar el ejercicio de la crítica, para el que nos sentimos vocacionalmente inclinados quienes participamos en el proyecto. Nos alegra poder empezar este curso confirmando que estamos cumpliendo nuestro compromiso, que nuestro propósito sigue en marcha, que lo sostienen los mismos objetivos y que podemos mirar hacia atrás y hacia adelante -hacia los 21 números publicados y hacia los diez que nos proponemos publicar hasta el próximo verano-con orgullo e ilusión.

Football is made of heroes but is also made of gangs, gambling, corruption and violence. Crime fiction has used everything that surrounds football as a theme and inspiration. this paper examines the presence of football in Hispanic crime novels during the 21st century. Specifically, the article analyses the role of football as a background employed to describe the mechanisms of power in the novels Todo está perdonado (2011), by the Spanish Rafael Reig, and La pena máxima (2014), by the Peruvian Santiago Roncagliolo. The fusion of football chronicle and hard-boiled reveals the social criticism of these novelists. The literary use of football provides a gateway to construct an autonomous discourse on repression during certain historical periods.

El balón y la palabra, en contra de los prejuicios, pueden llegar a coincidir por momentos en sus modos de expresión. Fútbol y literatura, lejos de considerarse disciplinas antagónicas, convergen en determinados conceptos. Este artículo analiza el cuento «Yo soy Fontanarrosa», del mexicano Juan Villoro, a partir de la noción de estilo como forma de establecer una suerte de comparatismo entre fútbol y literatura. El carácter humorístico del relato se expresa a través de un conjunto de voces que dialogan y juegan con la tradición. El homenaje de Villoro a uno de sus referentes se convierte en un ejercicio de estilo que propicia una lectura interdisciplinar. Los escritores, de este modo, hablan desde la cancha haciéndonos llegar el eco de una peculiar polifonía.

El fútbol es mito, el fútbol puede ser literatura. Un deporte que apasiona y conmueve a millones de personas como ningún otro juego a lo largo de la historia no puede permanecer al margen de cuentos, poemas y novelas. El fútbol es un fenómeno que, en contra de lo que pueda parecer, en contra de los prejuicios acumulados, ha recibido una atención notable por parte de algunos de los mejores escritores en lengua española. De Cela a Delibes, de Bolaño a Villoro, pasando por los clásicos futboleros como Fontanarrosa o Soriano, este ensayo rastrea la evolución del fútbol en la literatura hispánica a través de los principales motivos que han servido para fijar y anotar el gol en la palabra.

This is an intensive distance-learning class. You are expected to have access to high-speed internet during the entire period of this class. You are expected to check Blackboard on a daily basis. Course Description : From rugby to football, from cricket to baseball, from field to ice hockey: sports both impact and reflect differences within and between societies. This course takes a humanities approach to sports in fiction and film, examining their involvement in the worlds of politics and money, commerce and entertainment. Comparing an array of sports as portrayed in films and literature, we will further discuss their implications on issues of class, gender, race, and sexuality. I hope that we can enjoy lively discussions during this semester. The texts I am requiring are designed to provide a historical and generic range, but your experiences and reading will also be important.

El boxeo mexicano ha generado una larga tradición literaria y gráfica que ha sido poco estudiada. Este ensayo analiza las crónicas “La última gigantomaquia,” de José Juan Tablada, “Las glorias del gran Púas,” de Ricardo Garibay, y “La hora del consumo de los orgullos,” de Carlos Monsiváis. En ellas el boxeo sirve como espacio donde se representan y resuelven simbólicamente tensiones políticas y sociales, nacionales y transnacionales. Además, como industria deportiva el boxeo es el espacio en donde se experimentaron las prácticas y condiciones a las que se enfrentará el deportista profesional dentro del capitalismo global. Por otra parte, debido a la violencia que conlleva, el boxeo ha sido el espacio donde se representa la masculinidad moderna. Las tres crónicas que conforman este ensayo crean un arco temporal que recorre el siglo XX mexicano y muestran la relación del deporte con el periodismo, la política y el mercado global.

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The Mexican boxing tradition has generated a long line of literary and graphical works that have not been studied. This article focuses on three boxing chronicles: “La última gigantomaquia,” by José Juan Tablada; “Las glorias del gran Púas,” by Ricardo Garibay; and “La hora del consumo de los orgullos,” by Carlos Monsiváis. In these chronicles, boxing serves as a symbolic space in which social and political tensions are resolved. Moreover, as a sports industry boxing is a place where the professional sportsman faces the practices and conditions of global capitalism. As a result of the violence involved, boxing has also become a space that represents modern masculinity. The three works that inform this article thus arc through the Mexican twentieth century, revealing the relationship of boxing, journalism, politics, and the global market.

Deportivo Independiente Medellín, DIM, has exerted an irresistible fascination for some of the foremost writers of Colombia today. Authors such as Héctor Abad Faciolince, Juan Manuel Roca and Darío Jaramillo Agudelo have produced texts on DIM in addition to those written by journalists as Reinaldo Spitaletta, Guillermo Zuluaga or Gonzalo Medina. In all of them we find some common motifs on the suffering and relapsing character of this team’s fans. From the approach to the concept of aguante, studied by the Argentine sociologist Pablo Alabarces, and the analysis of some mythical elements in the narrative of football, this article aims to demonstrate how literature helps to consolidate an autonomous discourse on the Poderoso claiming ideas like the seduction of failure or complacency in defeat.

El fútbol, si lo pensamos como la “recuperación semanal de la infancia” tal y como proponía Javier Marías, permite la construcción de un universo propio ligado a la evocación de calles, potreros, patios y demás lugares en los que patear un objeto esférico, sea una pelota de trapo o un balón de reglamento, constituía una forma de pertenencia. El escritor Miguel Ángel Ortiz, nacido en 1982, ha plasmado esta idea en su novela La inmensa minoría (2014). En ella, ahondando en los temas ya apuntados en su primer libro (Fuera de juego, 2013), recurre al fútbol en tanto símbolo identitario de un grupo de chicos que se hallan en plena transición de la adolescencia a la edad adulta. A través de diálogos que por momentos remiten a la tradición de autores como Ferlosio o Marsé, Miguel Ángel Ortiz describe la forma en que el fútbol ayuda a consolidar los vínculos de estos jóvenes del barrio de la Zona Franca, situado en el extrarradio de Barcelona. Frente a la homogeneidad de los discursos nacionalistas de los que se sienten completamente excluidos, los protagonistas de la novela de Ortiz descubrirán en el fútbol una de las pequeñas patrias que pueden construir en su día a día esos “otros catalanes”, como los llamaba Francisco Candel, autor cuya influencia se deja sentir en esta obra y que moldeó su mundo literario en torno a la Zona Franca durante la segunda mitad del siglo XX. Este trabajo pretende resaltar cómo en La inmensa minoría el fútbol se erige en un factor clave a la hora de definir los límites de un espacio periférico y simbólico desde el cual es posible reactualizar los motivos que configuran la educación sentimental de un grupo de chicos que habitan allí “donde la ciudad cambia su nombre”.

Un gol es ante todo palabra. Desde el mismo momento en que el balón cruza la línea de meta, el hincha condensa su pasión en un grito a través del cual verbaliza una imagen posible de la gloria. El gol es el instante consagrado del fútbol, una palabra de tres letras que sacude, arrebata y agita multitudes. Esta charla se dedica a rastrear la forma en que destacados autores de las letras hispanoamericanas han plasmado en sus obras el fulgor de este grito. Goles de Augusto Roa Bastos, de Gioconda Belli, de Osvaldo Soriano, de Hernán Casciari, goles que se dicen y se anotan en la página. Imagen poética para algunos, canto de la apoteosis del héroe, palabra esencial, remate del verbo; el gol es la razón y el motivo que da sentido al fútbol pero también a su literatura.

A little hung-over, for a lark, you let them harness you up, crash helmet and all, to try the zip-line run maybe eighty yards long, over high grass, from one tower to the other—your guides, skiers in need of summer work, ramping up the enthusiasm. A little awkward at first, you lift your legs and fly along the line till you hit the brake point, jerk to a halt, dangle and sway. It’s a safe life this, a one-way zip down a straight path, seeming to soar but held in by straps, hooks, braced against falls, reeled in and hooked to another rope to get you off the platform, slow-fall to earth. So unlike the life you tell us of: miscarriages, a still-born child, the grieving, difficult marriage, the adoption and sudden new pregnancy out of the blue.

Il messaggio è sempre influenzato dal mezzo di comunicazione scelto per diffonderlo. Negli ultimi anni, grazie all’affermazione e la diffusione su larga scala del web, il discorso sullo sport si è arricchito e modificato sensibilmente. Nell’intervista Emanuele Atturo, Carlo Baghetti e Daniele Manusia dialogano sul modo in cui la comunicazione culturale sullo sport sia cambiata e sul ruolo che, in tale trasformazione, ha tenuto la rivista l’Ultimo Uomo.

Abstract According to sport literature specialist Pierre Charreton, the interwar period in France witnessed the culmination of fictional writings dedicated to sporting disciplines, part of which is the genre of boxing fiction. Through the examination of two recovered novels, Henri Decoin’s Quinze Rounds (1930) and Alfred Menguy’s Gueules Aplaties (1933), I demonstrate that boxing fiction complicates ideas of heroism, violence, and suffering, thus operating as an unexpected outlet for the traumatic experiences suffered by French society during World War I. After establishing meliorative connections between boxers and soldiers based on their shared heroism and courage, the two authors recast the idealized perception of masculine strength usually typified by both figures. Soon undermined by suffering and trauma, the fictional pugilists of Decoin and Menguy begin to mirror the wounded soldiers of the Great War and expose the taboo surrounding trauma and masculinity post-WWI. In Quinze Rounds and Gueules Aplaties, the presence of fallen pugilists echoes that of fallen soldiers and challenge the reader to face what can be seen as French society’s larger coping mechanisms, those of avoidance and amnesia, when faced with the memories of the Great War and its distressing aftermath.

Nothing could have been simpler than ‘birdwatching.’ An activity by that name would have required nothing more than one person, alone, watching birds, any birds ... But in the early 1970s, we were not birdwatching. We were birding, and that made all the difference. ... We became a community of birders, with the complications that human societies always have; and although it was the birds that had brought us together, our story became a human story after all. Kenn Kaufman, Kingbird Highway (xi)

This qualitative study explored the extent to which an archetype presented through a non-fiction text could impact aspiring coaches' (AC's) dispositions regarding social justice. Forty-three aspiring coaches at a Midwestern university enrolled in a foundations class that presented issues related to inequity were studied. Analysis of student journals indicated changes in AC's philosophies regarding social justice, an appreciation for the perspectives of underrepresented groups and emergent critical perspectives when examining sport processes. Results of the study imply that a focus on democratic education and constructivism in coaching preparation programs may be of benefit. A means by which praxis of this nature can be realized for future professionals is presented using Giddens' structuration theory.

in: Bílek, Petr – Šebek, Josef (eds.): Česká populární kultura. Transfery, transponování a další tranzitní procesy, Praha: Univerzita Karlova, Filozofická fakulta 2017, ISBN 978-80-7308-725-8, s. 297–321.

V rámci zkoumání autobiografických textů nemusí být podnětné pouze analýzy literárních experimentů a tradičních děl. Autobiografie sportovců nabízejí podnětnou a z velké části neprobádanou oblast, která se silně podílí na utváření žánrových norem. Půdorysem vyprávění je autorova „cesta vzhůru“, toto schéma je však ovlivněno ryze sportovním charakterem životnho vývoje a úspěchu. Na příkladu textů Jaromíra Jágra (Vlastní životopis), Dominika Haška (Chytám svůj život), Toniho Schumachera (Odpískáno), Franze Beckenbauera (Já: jak to skutečně bylo) a Davida Beckhama (Jak to vidím já) ukazujeme specifika autobiografií sportovců na rovině kompozice, motivů či stylistických prostředků, zároveň je však zasazujeme do širšího kontextu teorie autobiografie, v němž se mnohé jejich postupy ukazují být srovnatelné s textovými strategiemi klasických literárních autobiografií.

Entre las redes: Una lectura bajtiniana de El portero de Gonzalo Suárez El filme El portero (2000), del escritor y cineasta ovetense Gonzalo Suárez, muy probablemente no pasará a la historia como una obra maestra de la cinematografía. Estrenada el 8 de septiembre del año 2000, la película recogió críticas amables por parte de la prensa, además de 2 nominaciones a los premios Goya y el premio Sant Jordi a la mejor película española en el año 2001, sin llegar, no obstante, a trascender a nivel artístico o popular. La pregunta que se impone entonces es: ¿Por qué ocuparse de un film que puede ser considerado menor (más allá de nuestro desacuerdo con dicha categorización) dentro de la cinematografía española y mundial?

truths about our national character, our human nature, our past, and our future. But most are momentary diversions, easily forgotten. All but the avid fans of Ripken and Sandberg would put Iron Man and Second to Home in the latter category. Christopher Moinet Dick Vitale with Dick Weiss. Holding Court: Reflections on the Game I hove. Indianapolis: Masters, 1995. 271 pp. $22.95. John Feinstein. Winter Games. Boston: Little, 1995. 277 pp. $21.95. In his Introduction, Vitale stresses his "passion and enthusiasm" for basketball, and what ESPN viewer couldn't sense that in listening to the typical Vitale commentary? However, I felt less than enthusiastic about this book. Filled with tributes to coaches such as Krzyzewski, Richardson, Sutton, Pitino, Wooden, Knight, and, of course, Jim Harrick (of the great 1995 tourney run); crammed with pencil-thin sketches of "PTPers" (