As sport has grown, progressively replacing religion, in its power to excite passion, provide emotional escape, offer fraternal (and increasingly sororital) bonding, it has come to loom larger and larger in the lives of Europeans and others. It has become an inescapable reality linking public environment with intimate experience and thus offers the historian an opportunity to inspect and attempt to grasp all the dimensions of the recent past and their relative share in individual and collective experience. This collection considers the evolution of modern sport in Europe and examines its role in shaping masculine identity.

Mangan, J. A.

Prologue: Symbols of security? J A Mangan; the Ephebia in the ancient Hellenic world and its role in making masculinity, Evangelos Albanidis; anthromorphic symbols of agression and mythical male heroes: fighting bulls in Southern European culture, Frederic Sauvade and Jean Michel Deleplace; asserting male values: 19th century fetes, games and masculinity - a French case study, Remi Dalisson; the other side of the coin: Victorian and Edwardian field sports, elite English education and middle-class masculinity, J A Mangan and Callum McKenzie; the masculine road through modernity: Ling gymnastics and male socialization in 19th century Sweden, Jens Ljunggren; athleticiam in the service of the proletariat: preperation for the elementary school and the extension of middle-class masculinity, J A Mangan and Colm Hickey; male rites of passage: Ollerup Danish gymnastic between the wars, Hans Bonde; pre-totalitarian, totalitarian and post-totalitarian masculinity: the projection of the male image in sports policy in Bulgaria, Vassil Girginov.