Roxanna Curto is an Associate Professor of French and Spanish at the University of Iowa. Rebecca Wines is an Associate Professor of French and Co-Chair of Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies at Cornell College.

• IntroductionRoxanna Curto and Rebecca WinesPart I : Physical Activities and Games prior to the Twentieth CenturyChapter 1: Avatars of Sport in Medieval and Early-Modern French LiteratureJohn McClellandChapter 2: Are Mountaineers Romantics?: The Art of Viewing and Climbing in 19th-Century FrancePierre-Olaf SchutChapter 3: ‘Tennis Killed Me’: Sport as Failed Ritual in the Works of Prosper MériméeCorry CropperPart II: The Tour de FranceChapter 4: Henri Desgrange, Cycling, and Modern MasculinitiesRebecca WinesChapter 5: Barthes, Blondin and the Tour de France of the Trente GlorieusesRuadhán CookePart III: The Stylistics of Running and WritingChapter 6: Dominique Braga’s Literary StrideThomas BauerChapter 7: Communism, Bio-Fiction and the Olympics in Jean Echenoz’s CourirRoxanna CurtoPart IV: Football CulturesChapter 8: ‘She has a great shot!’: Representations of Sport and Gender in the French Book Series Le Petit NicolasCynthia LabordeChapter 9: Kourat el Kadem: Soccer Culture in Postcolonial Francophone Algerian TextsChrista JonesChapter 10: ‘The Gaze Always Finds Zidane’: Aesthetics and Overdetermination in Toussaint, Delbée and Gordon and ParrenoLuke HealeyChapter 11: Reassessing Voivenel’s Mon Beau RugbyKeith RathboneChapter 12: Corporeal Conceptions: Body Politics, French Republicanism and Sport in Banlieue LiteratureMarshall L. SmithChapter 13: Fighting as a Trope for Flight from Conflict: Combat Sports in Le débrouillard (N.G.M. Faye) and L’appel des arènes (Aminata Sow Fall)Christopher HogarthAbout the Contributors

'As the editors explain in the introduction, the title “Pour le Sport” is a French expression meaning “merely for the pleasure of performing it, and that no practical object is involved”... But in the best essays here the issues and texts explored actually do both–they provide pleasure while also achieving the “practical objects” of analysis, insight, and provocation.'Dave Buchanan, MacEwan University