Subjectivity and temporality in literary narratives about sports

Abstract

This article explores the concept of embodied subjectivity in literary narratives about sport. While embodied subjectivity has been central to the methodology of sociologists of sport in recent years, it is also manifested in complex and fascinating ways in a special kind of literary sports narrative. Using narrative strategies developed by novelists in the early twentieth century, the authors discussed here aim to do more than simply describe sporting experience. They recount the deep physical, emotional, and psychic transformation of the self through athletic training and competition. They represent the sporting self as a construct layered over time through inclination, repetition, and habit. They characterize competition as a felt, embodied, and even sometimes disembodied experience. The lived experience of sport cannot be captured in simple narratives. The literariness of these narratives enables their authors to portray convincingly that lived experience.