Sports and Physical Exercise in Early Modern Culture

Rebekka von Mallinckrodt is Professor for Early Modern History at the University of Bremen. She has worked in the field of religious studies, history of the body as well as postcolonial studies. With regard to sports and physical exercise she has published Bewegtes Leben - Körpertechniken in der Frühen Neuzeit (Body Techniques in the Early Modern Period), exposition catalogue Herzog August Library Wolfenbüttel (Harrassowitz 2008) as well as several articles on the cultural history of swimming, diving and running. Dr Angela Schattner is Max Weber 2016/17 Fellow at the University of Bremen and was Research Fellow in Early Modern History at the German Historical Institute London from 2010-2016. She specialises in the social and cultural history of Early Modern Britain and Germany and the history of the body, disability, sports, exercise and leisure. She is the author of Zwischen Familie, Heiler und Fürsorge. Das Bewältigungsverhalten von Epileptikern in deutschsprachigen Gebieten des 16.-18. Jahrunderts.

List of Figures

Notes on Contributors

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Rebekka v. Mallinckrodt and Angela Schattner

I: What Sports? Tracing Early Modern Sports Practices

1 The Invention of Sports: Early Modern Ball Games

Wolfgang Behringer

2 Sport and Recreation in Sixteenth-Century England: The Evidence of Accidental Deaths

Steven Gunn and Tomasz Gromelski

3 Putting Sports in Place: Sports Venues in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century England and their Social Significance

Angela Schattner

II: Sport for Money and Glory? Commercialisation and Professionalisation

4 The Capital of Tennis: Jeux de Paume as Urban Sport Facilities in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Paris

Christian Jaser

5 The Bruising Business: Pugilism, Commercial Culture and Celebrity, 1700–1750

Benjamin Litherland

6 An ‘Art and a Science’: Eighteenth-Century Sports Training

David Day

III: Promoting Health or Danger? Physical Exercise under Scrutiny

7 Exercise for Women

Alessandro Arcangeli

8 Healthy, ‘Decorous’ and Pleasant Exercise: Competing Models and Practices of the Italian Nobility (Sixteenth to Seventeenth Centuries)

Sandra Cavallo and Tessa Storey

9 Exercise, Health and Gender: Normative Discourses and Practices in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century German-Speaking Countries

Martin Dinges

IV: Enhancing or Endangering Status and Identity?

10 Masculine and Political Identity in German Martial Sports

B. Ann Tlusty

11 French Enlightenment Swimming

Rebekka v. Mallinckrodt

12 Swordsmanship and Society in Early Modern Japan

Michael Wert

Index