Die Vertreter der Rugbyliteratur im Frankreich der 1920er Jahre

Abstract

Should we understand the 1920s as a golden age for rugby-themed literature? Indeed, whether they are recognised authors or simple sports journalists, several writers took advantage of the editorial opportunities of the time to tell stories about rugby. Beyond their anecdotal or promotional nature, these stories constitute a real source of information to study the democratisation of a sport which, in Paris as well as in France’s other major cities, encouraged the nobility of the game and the elegance of its champions beyond rivalries and other suspicions during a dispute over the policy of paying salaries to amateur players. However, since literature is also a means of expressing and questioning the experiences of the First World War, some novelists have metaphorically brought rugby and war closer together to better reinterrogate, a posteriori, the meaning of the "Great Match". The analysis of these literary pages aims to provide an original insight into the history of French rugby during the Roaring Twenties.