Description
Book SynopsisIn sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spain, debating the acceptability of games and recreation was serious business. With Lector Ludens, Michael Scham uses Cervantes’s Don Quijote and Novelas ejemplares as the basis for a wide-ranging exploration of early modern Spanish views on recreations ranging from cards and dice to hunting, attending the theater, and reading fiction.
Shifting fluidly between modern theories of play, little-known Spanish treatises on leisure and games, and the evidence in Cervantes’s own works, Scham illuminates Cervantes’s intense fascination with games, play, and leisure, as well as the tensions in early modern Spain between the stern moralizing of the Counter-Reformation and the playfulness of Renaissance humanism.
Trade Review'I endorse Scham's book as a fine contribution to Cervantes studies.' -- Eduardo Olid Guerrero Modern Philology vol 113:04:2016 'The range and depth of the study are admirable. The approach is scholarly and distinctive with some surprising and effective juxtapositions - and the treatment of the topic is, appropriately entertaining. Highly recommended.' -- E.H. Friedman Choice Magazine vol 52:06:2015 'Scham's book is a fascinating and scholarly analysis of games and play in Cervantes and an excellent accounting of his place in wider European context.' -- Harry Sieber Renaissance Quarterly vol 68:04:2014
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments List of Illustrations Introduction 1. Leisure and Recreation in Early Modern Spain * Theoretical Contexts * Prerational and Rational Play in the Epic, the Picaresque, and the Quixotic * The Space and Function of Eutrapelia * Cristobal Mendez, Rodrigo Caro, Fray Alonso Remon: Therapeutic Exercise * Human Divinity and Depravity: Vives, Erasmus, Montaigne * Play types in Golden Age Spain * Chess * Games of Chance * Physical activity and competition * Mimesis * Ilinx * Regulating play in the Indias 2. Solitary, Collaborative and Complicit Play in Don Quijote * Cervantes and the Ambivalent Freedom of Play * Players and Games in Don Quijote * Play and Laughter in Don Quijote * Laughing At, Laughing With * Comic Doubt and Delusion in Don Quijote * Ludic Scepticism in Don Quijote II 3. The Novelas ejemplares: Ocio, Exemplarity, and Community * Agonistic and Restrictive Play in El licenciado Vidriera * The Agonistic Intellect: Cruel Comedy and Vidriera's Humourless Vision * The Picaresque and Play in El coloquio de los perros * Play and the Liminal Underworld Experience * Dialogue and the Digressive Quest for Meaning in El coloquio de los perros * Play and the Exemplarity of Process * Picaresque Freedom and Festive Play * The Festive Mode of the Picaresque * Monipodio's Criminal and Ludic Community in Rinconete y Cortadillo * Distance, Morality, and the Allure of the Aesthetic Experience * Generic Interplay in La ilustre fregona * Interrogation and Validation of the Fictional World Conclusion Notes Bibliography
