Disreputable Pleasures: Less Virtuous Victorians at Play (Sport in the Global Society: Vol. 51)

Synopsis

Many historians have claimed that respectability was the sharpest line of social division in Victorian society, even that the line between the 'respectable' and 'unrespectable' was more significant than between rich and poor. This irreverent and revisionist collection argues that they have over-polarised Victorian attitudes and challenges the conventional view that middle-class Victorian leisure had a respectable and serious purpose and approach. Disreputable Pleasures explores the more sinful and unrespectable Victorian male sporting pleasures, demonstrating the complex interrelationships between such value as manliness, muscularity and machismo, or sensuality, virility and hedonism. It sheds light on the ways in which the public rhetoric of Victorian respectability could be rendered problematic by the practical pursuit of private pleasures. It shows that Victorian leisure was much more contested cultural space than has been recognised, a battleground whose contestants ranged from the rational recreationalist to the avowedly hedonistic, and from the sacred to the profane.Disreputable Pleasures poses a powerful challenge to the accepted public image of Victorian society and will greatly add to our present understanding of Victorian Britain.

Copyright:

2005

Book Details

Book Quality:

Publisher Quality

ISBN-13:

9781135773090

Related ISBNs:

9780203487082, 9780714653631, 9780714653631, 9780415345989, 9780415345989

Publisher:

Taylor and Francis

Date of Addition:

05/07/20

Copyrighted By:

N/A

Adult content:

No

Language:

English

Has Image Descriptions:

No

Categories:

History, Nonfiction, Sports

Submitted By:

Bookshare Staff

Usage Restrictions:

This is a copyrighted book.

Edited by:

Mike Huggins

Edited by:

J. A. Mangan