Getting to Grips with Wrestling History and its Uses for Literary Scholars

The history of traditional wrestling is arguably little known amongst many literary scholars, and yet the sport features in a number of historic literary texts, including some by Shakespeare, Chaucer and Thomas Hardy as well as more recent authors such as Winston Graham. This review article suggests that a literary scholar might benefit from learning more about the sport history. Mike Tripp’s Cornish Wrestling: A History is an examination of a little known and, currently, little practised sport which was once popular in both England and amongst the English diaspora, featuring in a number of nineteenth-century English novels, such as R.D. Blackmore’s Lorna Doone. The review shows how Tripp’s detailed history of the sport might be used to illustrate potentially useful details in selected literary texts, which might otherwise be obscure to a literary researcher, including examination of the wider culture and practice of wrestling in the English West Country, and remarks on how the history of Cornwall can explain the sport’s presence and role in various literary texts.