| dc.description.abstract | This thesis is comprised of a critical component, “Hanging Them Up: Depictions of Retirement in Contemporary American Boxing Novels,” an analysis of depictions of retirement in the three key novels of American boxing literature, and a creative component, the novel Bruise, which is my own response to the ideas and issues raised in the critical. The critical component identifies a trope in boxing literature—that the primary pugilistic character dies before he can retire—and argues that this trope has become universal, perhaps endemic, within the genre. It does that through analysis of the three key novels of the genre—making connections to more minor texts where appropriate—for elements connected to retirement, ultimately coming to a series of conclusions that include: that retirement is not depicted as occurring in the fictive present; is not depicted positively if it has happened in the fictive past; and is often interchangeable with or indistinguishable from death. The creative component, Bruise, is contemporary literary novel following Jamie, a former champion prize fighter struggling to accept the reality of a career-ending injury as he returns to the birthplace he fled as a teenager. It is ultimately a story of rebirth, of a man struggling to build a new life in a world that seems to have little to offer him but memories of an unreachable, unchangeable past. Bruise is a narrative extension and thematic alternative to the existing literature. It illuminates elements of the lived experience that the genre’s other fiction only implies and lays the groundwork for a more pluralistic field of sport literature, especially the literature of combat sport, which seems more fatalistic than most. It acknowledges the problems surrounding athletic retirement, and then, uniquely in the genre, offers a solution. | en_GB |
