A Cultural History of Sport in the Renaissance . Vol. 3 of A Cultural History of Sport

Alessandro Arcangeli edited the third volume in Bloomsbury's A Cultural History of Sport, which Wray Vamplew, John McClelland, and Mark Dyreson oversaw as the editors for the entire anthology. Arcangeli's A Cultural History of Sport in the Renaissance focuses on the period from the mid–fifteenth century to the mid–seventeenth century. The two hundred years covered in this volume is significantly shorter than the approximately one thousand years addressed in each of the first two books but more than the final three. As with all of the other books in this set, Arcangeli, as the editor, wrote the introduction, followed by the eight chapters, which use the same titles across each volume. It is one of the strongest volumes within the set.Arcangeli emphasizes within the introduction how transformative this period was for sport. Drawing on Francis Bacon's conclusions about the importance of the printing press, firearms, and the compass as inventions that changed society, Arcangeli argues these same three “inventions had their impact on the contemporary development of sporting pursuits, and contributed to qualify the particular way they were practiced and represented during the early modern period” (8). He clarifies what makes this volume a cultural history of sport (his emphasis) is attention given to “all people involved—participants as well as organizers and spectators” (14). During this period, many of the long-existing festive entertainments, which often contained violence, “were progressively controlled, repressed or sterilized into tamer, more regulated activities” (17).Arcangeli also wrote the first chapter, “The Purpose of Sport,” in which he considers the many different types of activities that can fall under the broad category of sport within this period. People participated in sport or leisure activities for legal purposes (such as dueling), militarily, as a form of gambling, and for health. Medical reasons led to the publication of texts about the body, which can be considered early forms of physical education. Angela Schattner moves from why people participated in sport to considering “Sporting Time and Sporting Space.” Schattner demonstrates that people of all classes and genders were able to participate in sporting activities during the Renaissance as participants, spectators, or organizers. Sport could take place anywhere, as “nearly any accessible and large enough space or waterway served for sports, games, and exercises in Renaissance Europe” (51). This period saw the establishment of specific spaces for sport, first within aristocratic homes and then freestanding buildings before ultimately the creation of commercial space within cities.The commercialization of sport during the Renaissance is particularly apparent in Élisabeth Belmas's chapter “Products, Training, and Technology” and Christian Jaser's “Rules and Order.” Belmas traces the expansion of the publication of specialized books on sport topics, the production of sporting equipment, and the construction (and maintenance) of buildings specifically for sport. These commercial activities “accompanied increased interest in judicious physical exercise” (84). This expanded interest in sport meant that people had to participate according to the same expectations, which, as Jaser notes, led to “the increasing textualization and use of written norms on the playing and jousting fields, racetracks, and shooting ranges” along with the need “to establish order and security during the sporting events” (89).The final four chapters expand further on who participated in sport and the ways in which sport differentiated the populations, or how groups used various sporting activities to mark distinctions. Diane Roussel's chapter, “Conflict and Accommodation,” demonstrates how “sports were caught in a tense tug-of-war between the value placed on activities promoting good health for both the individual's body and society as a whole, and mounting opposition to games as amusements” (107). Matteo Casini continues with the ways in which sport was used for “Inclusion, Exclusion, and Segregation,” as the chapter title suggests. Laurent Turcot focuses on medical and religious texts and other writings that addressed the educative nature of sport and activity, all of which addressed the “Minds, Bodies, and Identities” of people at the time. In the final chapter, “Representation,” Antonella Fenech Kroke examines the broad inclusion of sport within paintings and drawings, with the rise of the “sportive body” from texts (181) appearing within visual depictions of people (albeit usually men).The one criticism of this volume is its focus almost entirely on sport within Europe. Kroke's chapter is one of the few places where sport outside of Europe is considered, with a section on the New World's athletic bodies (195–98). Nonetheless, this volume provides a much greater understanding of sport prior to the development of modern sport in the mid–nineteenth century, and sport historians would benefit from reading this volume to provide greater context in class sessions that address pre-modern sport history. The final sentence of the book, from Kroke's chapter, perhaps sums up the volume best: sport “as culture and practice, did not suddenly make its appearance in nineteenth-century England” (203). As demonstrated in this book, sport, physical activity, and physical education were incredibly prominent across countries and people throughout Renaissance Europe

Art history · Cultural history · Sociology · The Renaissance · Anthropology · History · Sports and Physical Education Studies · Sports, Gender, and Society