Sporting with the gods
Subtitle: the rhetoric of play and game in American culture
By: Michael Oriard.
Series: Cambridge studies in American literature and culture
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 1991
Place of publication: Cambridge [England]; New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 579
Subjects: American literature -- History and criticism; Play in literature; English language -- United States -- Rhetoric; Popular culture -- United States; Sports in literature; Games in literature; Metaphor; United States -- Civilization
Description: "Sporting with the Gods examines the rhetoric of "game" and "play" and "sport" in American culture from the time of the Puritans to the 1980s. Focusing on writers and public figures who dominated public discourse, Oriard shows how the trope of game and play in fiction and in religious, social, and economic writings can be used to graph changes in the religious and social climate from the Puritans through the Transcendentalists to the Social Darwinists and from the Beats and hippies to the New Age spiritualists of the present decade. He also uses the trope to graph the shifting attitudes toward work (and play) in the game of business, as the United States moved to industrial capitalism and then to a postindustrial society of consumerism and leisure. The result is a history of this country from its inception, through the lens of a single trope, resonating with implications at every strata of American culture." --from back cover.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 485-558) and index.