Boxing in Victorian Britain

Paper Summary:

This paper examines how one of the first systems of institutionalizing and creating a more humane and formal structure for the pugilistic art of boxing was achieved by the codification of the boxing rules and regulations of the Marquis of Queensbury, who was the father of ?Boise?, or Lord Alfred Douglas, the male lover of Oscar Wilde. It analyzes how this strange paring in history of a famous coupling of homosexuality and an advocate of masculinity in its raw form of Victorian sport embodies the contradiction in the cult of Victorian masculinity.

From the Paper:

"In this cult, erotic, athletic, and sexual encounters between men were virtually institutionalized in the British university and public school system, idealized in the era's imperial worship of Greek and Roman classicism and culture, yet also outlawed according to the strictures of governance according to the nation. Bare-fisted boxing, continued even after the Queensbury rules were passed, as is evident in popular illustrations of the period. The popularity of bare-fisted boxing in art and in print also shows how long the supposedly illegal art of bare-fisted boxing continued in the open. This bare-fisted sport was often practiced by working men at taverns, and became a kind of proving-ground of masculinity, away from the more regulated and elite forms of boxing according to the rules."

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