Rugby, Modernity and Controversy: Le P’tit Parigot (1926) by René Le Somptier
Résumé
The history of sports literature has enjoyed renewed interest over the last few
years, with a noticeable increase in the number of Anglo-Saxon works and the
revival of French research. Through fiction, it is possible to understand the
processes whereby ideas spread and collective imaginaries are constructed. In
this regard, this article revisits the history of rugby union through the prism of
a cine-novel, Le P’tit Parigot (1926), which was presented in serialised form via
the newspaper L’Intransigeant and as a six-episode film in cinemas. It depicts
the misfortunes of Georges Grigny-Latour, also known as the ‘P’tit Parigot’,
son of an academic and captain of the French rugby union football team. This
sport serial is a historical source of precious and useful information enabling
us to address the representations of rugby at the time. The article aims to
characterise the ambiguous identity of the sport during the Roaring Twenties,
an identity that was torn between a Parisian spirit cultivating the idea of
rugby as the inheritance of Anglo-Saxon values, and a provincial vision using
it as a means of territorial expression.