On Athleticism in the Victorian and Edwardian public school: A semiotic analysis of J.A. Mangan's approach to historical knowledge

Abstract

With specific reference to J.A. Mangan's approach to historical knowledge within the cultural history of sport in the period referred to by Prothero, this essay will address Mangan's style of historical writing in the early 1980s. It will use a semiotic-based approach to identify, classify and relate the complex cultural objects depicted by the author such as imperialism, athletocracy, sexual identity, morality and cohesion. A full exploration of Mangan's extensive contribution to the history of sport is beyond the scope of this piece. This essay tries simply to offer argument and evidence in support of the hypothesis that his robust 'revisionist approach', his theoretical scope, and, most of all, the synthetic power of his imagination make Athleticism a singular work in intellectual history, in literature, and in the cultural history of modern sport. The primary objective is to demonstrate that Mangan's rhetorical approach to, and semiotic perspective of the history of sport represent the working out of the imagetic possibilities contained in poetic language in the discipline of history. Operating in this way, in terms of H. White, means describing and analysing a chronic pluralism and the chronic recurrence of certain tropes with their attendant linguistic protocols, frames, formal arguments and ideological implications. This essay will also approach the rhetorical nature of historical knowledge in order to establish and analyse the deservedly prominent position occupied by Mangan in the context of a semiotic-oriented analysis of history. As mentioned earlier, since it is impossible, in the space available, to identify fully and wholly analyse the socio-constructional nature of the