Harvey, Andy (2012) Tom Brown’s schooldays: ‘sportsex’ in Victorian Britain. Critical Survey 24 (1), pp. 17-29. ISSN 0011-1570.
|
Text (Refereed)
5881.pdf - Author's Accepted Manuscript Download (601kB) | Preview |
Abstract
Thomas Hughes’ idealised vision of life at Rugby public school is one of the best-known novels in the English language. It was regarded from the outset as a founding text of ‘muscular Christianity’. Contrary to the intentions of its author, it helped to inaugurate the cult of ‘manly’ athleticism that swept through the English public schools in the second half of the nineteenth-century. I argue that the novel reveals tensions around gender and sexuality that were in play among public schoolboys during the second half of the nineteenth-century. These tensions exploded into full public view in the trial of Oscar Wilde in 1895 and were instrumental in helping to establish a structure of homophobia within homosocial settings that has lasted through to the present day.
Metadata
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Additional Information: | This is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedited version of an article published in Critical Survey. The definitive publisher-authenticated version: Harvey, A. (2012), Tom Brown’s schooldays: ‘sportsex’ in Victorian Britain, Critical Survey 24(1) is available online at: http://dx.doi.org/10.3167/cs.2012.240102 |
| School: | Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences > School of Social Sciences |
| Depositing User: | Andrew Harvey |
| Date Deposited: | 07 Dec 2012 10:29 |
| Last Modified: | 02 Aug 2023 17:01 |
| URI: | https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/5881 |
Statistics
Additional statistics are available via IRStats2.
Archive Staff Only (login required)
