The Healthy Body and Victorian Culture

by Bruce Haley

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674284739
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	04/03/2014
Edition description:	Reprint 2014 ed.
Pages:	308
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.75(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

Table of Contents

Part One: Sound Body, Sound Mind
1. Introduction: Victorian Health

2. Mens Sana in Corpore Sano: Victorian Psychophysiology

3. The Thoroughly Healthy Mind: Victorian Criticism

4. Obeying the Laws of Life: Carlyle and Spencer

5. Types of Healthy Christianity: Newman and Kingsley

Part Two: The Healthy Man

6. The New Era: Victorian Sport and Training

7. Growing Up Healthy: Images of Boyhood

8. Anarchy and Physical Culture

9. Two Staunch Walkers: Tom Thurnall and Tom Tulliver

10. The True Gentleman and the Washed Rough in Broadcloth

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

12. Conclusion

Notes

Index