Does Clio Need Help? A Plea for a More Extensive Use of Literary and Visual Texts 1

For decades there was been a debate, especially about German Scholars, over the discipline of sports studies. Is it indeed a discipline or merely the intersection of history, sociology, and a number of other established disciplinees? Assuming the latter, it behooves everyone engaged in sports history to take seriously not only popular culture's representations of sports but also ‘‘high cultural’’ interpretations by writers and artists. Ernest Himingway's The Sun Aso Rises and a series of ten visual images can exemplify some of the ways that historians can profitably draw upon literary and artistic materials – as Hans Ulrich Gumbricht has done in his study of aesthetics and sports spectatorship: In Praise of Athletic Beauty.