Brunstrom, Conrad and Cassidy, Tanya M. (2012) 'Scorn Eunuch Sports': Class, Gender and the Context of Early Cricket. Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 35 (2). pp. 223-237. ISSN 1754-0194

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Abstract

The under-theorised eighteenth-century game of cricket represents a far more fluid and paradoxical site of enquiry than the exhaustively politicised discussions of the nineteenth- and twentieth-century versions of the sport. Eighteenth-century cricket represents a way of describing the performance of gender within a context of patriotic self-imagining. Poems and paintings describing cricketers of both sexes illustrate how ideas of masculinity and femininity can be celebrated and challenged at the same time. The extent to which cricket (as it is steadily organised and coded) functions as a 'heroic' pastime says much about the centrality of sport in general within the national consciousness.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	The definitive version of this article is available at DOI: 10.1111/j.1754-0208.2012.00498.x
Keywords:	class; gender; Early Cricket; Eighteenth-century; cricket; sport;
Academic Unit:	Faculty of Arts,Celtic Studies and Philosophy > School of English, Media & Theatre Studies > English
Item ID:	6598
Identification Number:	https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1754-0208.2012.00498.x
Depositing User:	Dr. Conrad Brunstrom
Date Deposited:	27 Nov 2015 16:16
Journal or Publication Title:	Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies
Publisher:	Wiley
Refereed:	Yes
URI:	http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com
Use Licence:	This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available here

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