Playing at Monarchy: Sport as Metaphor in Nineteenth-Century France by Corry Cropper (review)

If you grew up in France as a garçon de bonne famille on a regimen of tennis and fencing, your aversion for parvenus could reach its nadir in a quasi-Lacanian méconnaissance with the fanaticism of American college football, its celebration of big bucks and unabashed media frenzy. But the enigma of America, as evident from Corry Cropper's rigorous study, is that it is after all a former British colony that never had a chance to mature through the trials and tribulations of monarchy, empire, and republic. Yet the American experiment is also very much the product of French grandeur and intellectual prowess. From Lafayette's heroic warcraft to Crèvecœur's cowboy poetry, there would be no American exceptionalism without France. Corry Cropper is a remarkable observer of the unspoken subtext of this French heritage. By sifting through the works of Balzac, Mérimée, Flaubert, Maupassant, Théophile Gautier and others, he reminds us that sports and games are not just mindless activities. Rather, they "are used for political ends and [. . .] their presentation is crucial in forming and maintaining a cultural and political power structure" (xiii). Indeed, by "sports" Cropper refers to all leisurely activities—including playing skittles or even dominos. If the term is reminiscent of nineteenth-century comedies of manners, it is because Cropper predominantly writes about the period between the ancien régime and the modern era, its reactionary unease with the Revolution of 1789 and its unpalatable aftertaste from the 1870 defeat at the hands of the Prussians.

Class lies at the centerpiece of this analysis. Aptly enough, Cropper draws our attention to the distinctions between noblesse d'épée, noblesse de robe, and the bourgeoisie. Nowhere is this more palpable than in his analysis of Eugene Chapus's ridiculous books about regal manners and pastimes destined for a nouveau riche readership. Titles like Manuel de l'homme et de la femme comme il faut (1855), Les chasses princières en France de 1589-1841 (1853) or Le sport à Paris (1854), sometimes written under the pseudonym of Vicomte de Marennes are emblematic of the era for Cropper. More specifically, he shows how le jeu de paume (the precursor to tennis) was for centuries the sole prerogative of the aristocracy. Abandoned during the French Revolution of 1789, it made a comeback under Napoleon III (1852-1870). Similarly, hunting was stringently restricted to the nobility, with severe penalty laws under Charles VI and Louis XIV should commoners endeavor to partake in the sport. Fencing was also very much a regal sport, though it became more mainstream in the twentieth century, like tennis. As for chess, Cropper tells us it represented the violence of the feudal system whereas trictrac, a slow-paced card game, fell out of style during the Revolution and became defunct by the 1850s. These gems of historical trivia are sure to engage the reader.

Similarly, Cropper suggests it would be a misconception to assume the Olympic Games were seen as a celebration of sports for all, as they are now. For Pierre de Coubertin, the man who reestablished the Olympics after the Ancient Greece model in 1896, the main goal was to bring together the elites of many nations and "strengthen both the French aristocracy and the international aristocracy, while furnishing a means for these same elite to improve their physical and moral strength through competition" (168). Rather than the result of purely républicain aspirations embodied by Jules Ferry, it was Coubertin's fascination with the Bourbon Restoration that mattered. Even for a defender of bourgeois values like Alfred Picard, the Olympics were seen as a reactionary, vengeful response to the loss of 1870. Cropper's subsequent analysis of the rivalry between Coubertin and Picard is fascinating. Their egos not only represent two different ways to approach the polis, they also call into question (mis-)understandings of the modern construct of masculinity and its (un-)healthy body.

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