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Books & Archaeology
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With closed fists.
ROUBINEAU Jean-Manuel.

With closed fists.

PUF
€30,00 €0,00
N° d'inventaire 25853
Format 16.5 x 24
Détails 416 p., illustrated, paperback.
Publication Paris, 2022
Etat Nine
ISBN 9782130812944
Boxing, legend has it, was invented by Spartan soldiers eager to train themselves to ward off blows to the face. An art of defense as much as percussion, pugilism was perceived throughout Antiquity as the most dangerous of sports. True heroes of the stadium, adored for their courage, boxers compete naked, under the gaze of spectators, their leather-gloved fists as their only weapons. Scars, crushed ears, and broken noses are all proof of their virtue. But whether they dream of glory or money, scour local competitions or aspire to the Olympic crown, boxers must undergo demanding athletic preparation in the gymnasium. Constrained diets, sexual abstinence and constantly repeated exercises contribute to placing in their muscles inexhaustible reserves of strength, to polish their technique and prepare them for the brutality and discomfort of confrontations, the neck heated by the sun, the vision blurred by sweat or blood, the mouth dried by sand and thirst. Beyond the daily pugilistic, it is to a total history of the sport that this book invites: prohibitions and bad gestures, hygiene of life and body ideal, taste for spectacle and relationship to violence, because in the mirror of boxing, it is the city that is reflected.
Boxing, legend has it, was invented by Spartan soldiers eager to train themselves to ward off blows to the face. An art of defense as much as percussion, pugilism was perceived throughout Antiquity as the most dangerous of sports. True heroes of the stadium, adored for their courage, boxers compete naked, under the gaze of spectators, their leather-gloved fists as their only weapons. Scars, crushed ears, and broken noses are all proof of their virtue. But whether they dream of glory or money, scour local competitions or aspire to the Olympic crown, boxers must undergo demanding athletic preparation in the gymnasium. Constrained diets, sexual abstinence and constantly repeated exercises contribute to placing in their muscles inexhaustible reserves of strength, to polish their technique and prepare them for the brutality and discomfort of confrontations, the neck heated by the sun, the vision blurred by sweat or blood, the mouth dried by sand and thirst. Beyond the daily pugilistic, it is to a total history of the sport that this book invites: prohibitions and bad gestures, hygiene of life and body ideal, taste for spectacle and relationship to violence, because in the mirror of boxing, it is the city that is reflected.