French Literature Reviews - 2026

C. Cropper, Playing at Monarchy: Sport as Metaphor in Nineteenth-Century France
History, Politics and Society

Playing at Monarchy: Sport as Metaphor in Nineteenth-Century France

Corry Cropper

University of Nebraska Press, 2008.

EAN 9780803217737

Publisher's description:

For centuries sports have been used to mask or to uncover important social and political problems, and there is no better example of this than France during the nineteenth century, when it changed from monarchy to empire to republic. Prior to the French Revolution, sports and games were the exclusive domain of the nobility. The revolution, however, challenged the notion of noble privilege, and leisure activities began spreading to all levels of society. Games either evolved from Old Regime spectacles into bourgeois pastimes, such as hunting, or died out altogether, as did trictrac. During this period, sports and games became the symbolic cultural battlefield of an emerging modern state.

Playing at Monarchy looks at the ways sports and games (tennis, fencing, bullfighting, chess, trictrac, hunting, and the Olympics) are metaphorically used to defend and subvert, to praise and mock both class and political power structures in nineteenth-century France. Corry Cropper examines what shaped these nineteenth-century games and how they appeared as allegory in French literature (in the fiction of Balzac, Mérimée, Flaubert, Barbey d'Aurevilly, and others), and in newspapers, historical studies, and even game manuals. Throughout, he shows how the representation of play in all types of literature mirrors the most important social and political rifts in postrevolutionary France, while also serving as propaganda for competing political agendas. Though its focus is on France, Playing at Monarchy hints at the way these nineteenth-century developments inform perceptions of sport even today.

Corry Cropper is an associate professor of French studies at Brigham Young University and the author of several articles published in Nineteenth-Century French Studies, the French Review, and French Literature Series.

During the nineteenth century, France experienced profound political transformations as the nation shifted repeatedly among monarchical, imperial, and republican regimes. In this context of instability, leisure activities and physical pastimes took on new symbolic weight across various social strata. The period saw traditional noble privileges challenged, leading to the evolution or disappearance of older games and the emergence of bourgeois pastimes. These recreational practices frequently served as a cultural battleground where writers and commentators engaged with contemporary anxieties about class and governance in a modernizing society.

Corry Cropper examines the metaphorical uses of activities such as tennis, fencing, bullfighting, chess, trictrac, hunting, and the Olympics in nineteenth-century French culture. The study analyses how these pursuits appear as allegory in newspapers, historical studies, game manuals, and the fiction of authors like Balzac, Mérimée, Flaubert, and Barbey d'Aurevilly. Readers interested in nineteenth-century French literature, cultural history, and the intersection of politics and leisure may find this work relevant to their pursuits.