Writing the Body in Motion
Writing the Body in Motion
A Critical Anthology on Canadian Sport Literature
Sport literature is never just about sport. The genre’s potential to explore the human condition, including aspects of violence, gender, and the body, has sparked the interest of writers, readers, and scholars. Over the last decade, a proliferation of sport literature courses across the continent is evidence of the sophisticated and evolving body of work developing in this area. Writing the Body in Motion offers introductory essays on the most commonly taught Canadian sport literature texts. The contributions sketch the state of current scholarship, highlight recurring themes and patterns, and offer close readings of key works. Organized chronologically by source text, ranging from Shoeless Joe (1982) to Indian Horse (2012), the essays offer a variety of ways to read, consider, teach, and write about sport literature.
A game changer! An essential book for all teachers, students, and readers of sports literature. You will gain a much deeper understanding of the physical, emotional, and cultural complexities of sport. You will also gain keen insights into the attraction of sport to authors as a subject worthy of the most complex and affecting creative writing.
Abdou and Dopp’s Writing the Body in Motion gathers the voices of some of the finest scholars of Canadian sport literature, where they critically interrogate the field’s classic (and soon-to-be classic) texts. The collection is fresh and insightful and, above all, useful. This book will be a sturdy backbone for a new generation of scholars teaching and writing about sport and its many meanings in Canadian letters.
Introduction / Angie Abdou
1 W.P. Kinsella’s Shoeless Joe: Real People and Fantasy Quests / Fred Mason
2 “I join them in the circle”: Mythologizing Hockey and Identity in Paul Quarrington’s King Leary / Cara Hedley
3 Hockey, Humour, and Play Wayne Johnston’s The Divine Ryans / Jason Blake
4 “steel on water frozen calm”: the Poetry of Hockey in Richard Harrison’s Hero of the Play / Paul Martin
5 Glaciers, Embodiment, and the Sublime: An Introduction to Ecocriticism and Thomas Wharton’s Icefields / Cory Willard
6 Hockey, Zen and the Art of The Good Body / Jamie Dopp
7 The Sporting Woman in Literature: Strategies of Exclusion and the Absence-Presence of the Male Athlete in Cara Hedley’s Twenty Miles / Susan J. Bandy
8 The Darkening Path: the Hero-Athlete Reconsidered in The Bone Cage / Gyllian Phillips
9 “Open the door to the roaring darkness”:the enigma of Terry Sawchuk in Randall Maggs’ Night Work: The Sawchuk Poems / Paul Martin
10 From Tank to Deep Water: Samantha Warwick's Sage Island / Jamie Dopp
11 Identity and the Athlete: Alexander MacLeod’s “Miracle Mile” / Laura K Davis
12 Decolonizing the Hockey Novel: Ambivalence & Apotheosis in Richard Wagamese's Indian Horse / Sam McKegney and Trevor Phillips
