The Healthy Body and Victorian Culture / Bruce Haley.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Haley, Bruce, Author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

English literature--19th century--History and criticism.

English literature.

Health in literature.

Physical education and training in literature.

Public health--Great Britain--History--19th century.

Public health.

Physical education and training--Great Britain--History--19th century.

Physical education and training.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (306 pages) : illustrations

Edition:

Reprint 2014

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, [2014]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Health obsessed the Victorians. The quest for health guided Victorian living habits, shaped educational goals, and sanctioned a mania for athletic sports. As both metaphor and ideal, it influenced psychology, religion, moral philosophy; it affected the writing of history as well as the criticism of literature. Here is a wide-ranging and ably written exploration of this fascinating aspect of Victorian ideas. Bruce Haley looks at developments in personal and public health, and at theories about the relation between medical and psychological disorders. He examines influential conceptions of the healthy man: Carlyle's healthy hero, Spencer's biologically perfect man, Newman's gentleman-Christian, Kingsley's muscular Christian. He describes the development of sports and physical training in nineteenth-century England and their importance in schools and universities. He traces the concept of healthy body and healthy mind in boy's fiction (such as Torn Brown's School Days), self-help literature, and the widely read novels of George Eliot, Wilkie Collins, George Meredith, and Charles Kingsley. All these strands of social history, literature, and philosophy are woven together into a seamless whole.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Acknowledgments

Contents

PART ONE. Sound Body, Sound Mind

CHAPTER 1. Introduction: Victorian Health

CHAPTER 2. Mens Sana in Corpore Sano: Victorian Psychophysiology

CHAPTER 3. The Thoroughly Healthy Mind: Victorian Criticism

CHAPTER 4. Obeying the Laws of Life: Carlyle and Spencer

CHAPTER 5. Types of Healthy Christianity: Newman and Kingsley

PART TWO. The Healthy Man

CHAPTER 6. The New Era: Victorian Sport and Training

CHAPTER 7. Growing Up Healthy: Images of Boyhood

CHAPTER 8. Anarchy and Physical Culture

CHAPTER 9. Two Staunch Walkers: Tom Thurnall and Tom Tulliver

CHAPTER 10. The True Gentleman and the Washed Rough in Broadcloth

CHAPTER 11. The Athlete as Barbarian: Richard Feverel and Willoughby Patterne

CHAPTER 12. Conclusion

Notes

Index

Notes:

Includes index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 21. Dez 2019)

ISBN:

0-674-28474-7

OCLC:

1013938441