Abstract
The spatial turn in literary studies has resulted in a greater focus on the roles of space, place, and geography on the page. It follows that the relationship between sporting culture and literature is one in which the representation of space and place are key players. This chapter interrogates the literary architecture of sports sites in the creative literature of Irish writers. It considers sporting spaces as those places in which people gather in pursuit of play or for the consumption of sport. It examines the ways in which sporting spaces are implicated in the politics of memory, and how they serve as literary embodiments of memorial consciousness. Looking at a selection of representations of sports sites, this chapter seeks to examine the elision of literature and sporting space. This work deconstructs the Irish literary sportscape in an attempt to understand the significance of its architecture for creative writers. It asks what the implications are for creative writers who pitch the coordinates of sports sites to the page.
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This chapter builds on research submitted for publication in TEXT Special Issue 66: Creative Writing and Sport, June 2022. The author is grateful to the editorial committee for their support.
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Daly, G. (2023). The Architecture of the Sporting Site in Irish Fiction. In: McGowan, L., Symons, K. (eds) Intersections of Sport and Society in Creative Writing. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-5585-5_5
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