At the suggestion of a colleague, I started this blog to help write my masters thesis. It’s been awhile since I have written extensively in english, so hopefully this will help develop a solid style and serve as an outlet for less formal ideas.
What is this blog about? In laymans terms, I’m interested in the way that cycling races are portrayed in journalism. No, I’m not a journalist, nor does journalism interest me. But, I started reading French cycling news to help me learn French, and it worked, and I like to ride my bike, and I like to watch bike races. Combined with my love of literature, which now days manifests itself in mostly narratological studies, I decided to write about the literature of cycling. Thus, The story of cycling.
I see on the internet blogs such as Cosmo Catalano’s “how the race was won” and the Inner Rings “The Moment the Race was Won” and I notice distinct story telling differences, even when speaking about the same race. I wonder how if we all saw the same race, how did we make different narratives about it?
So, during the 2012 Tour de France I will be comparing and analyzing race re-caps from a literary perspective, focused on not only what they say, but how they say it. This is including, but not limited to, time of narration (verb tense), length of the article, and presence of the narrator.
Let’s face it: bike racing is boring. How do they make it the most dramatic and enthralling sport? It’s all story telling.
