Description
Book SynopsisCollecting diverse critical perspectives on the topic of play—from dolls, bilboquets, and lotteries, to writing itself—this volume offers new insights into how play was used to represent and reimagine the world in eighteenth-century France. In documenting various modes of play, contributors theorize its relation to law, religion, politics, and economics. Equally important was the role of “play” in plays, and the function of theatrical performance in mirroring, and often contesting, our place in the universe. These essays remind us that the spirit of play was very much alive during the “Age of Reason,” providing ways for its practitioners to consider more “serious” themes such as free will and determinism, illusions and equivocations, or chance and inequality. Standing at the intersection of multiple intellectual avenues, this is the first comprehensive study in English devoted to the different guises of play in Enlightenment France, certain to interest curious readers across disciplinary backgrounds.
Trade Review"Bringing together game studies and 18th-century French studies,
Modes of Play in Eighteenth-Century France is a most welcome contribution to the study of French literature, history, and culture. The collection introduces us to understudied works and provides fresh approaches to canonical texts, broadening our understanding of the interaction between play, culture, and politics." -- Tracy Rutler * co-creator of Legacies of the Enlightenment *
"An enjoyable and stimulating collection, this volume will be of much interest to students and scholars alike. It will undoubtedly spur new scholarly work on the history of play which, as the editors and contributors so convincingly show, is no trivial matter." -- Gemma Tidman * H-France Review *
Table of ContentsIntroduction
Fayçal Falaky and Reginald McGinnis
1 Playing with Dolls in Old Regime Fairy Tales
Rori Bloom
2 The Morality of Bilboquet, or the Equivocations of Language
Jean-Alexandre Perras
3 Fiction as Play: Rhetorical Subversion in Alain-René Lesage’s
Histoire de Gil Blas de Santillane Zeina Hakim
4 Playthings of Fortune: Lots, Games of Chance, and Inequality in l’Abbé Prévost
Masano Yamashita
5 Boundless Play and Infinite Pleasure in the Chevalier de Béthune’s Relation
du monde de Mercure Erika Mandarino
6 The Politics of Orientalist Fantasy in French Opera
Katharine Hargrave
7 Playing at Theater: Modes of Play in
Théâtre de Société Maria Teodora Comsa
8 Between Play and Ritual: Profane Masquerade in the French Revolution
Annelle Curulla
9 The Return of Play, or the End of Revolutionary Theater
Yann Robert
10 Video Games as Cultural History: Procedural Narrative and the Eighteenth-Century Fair Theater
Jeffrey M. Leichman
Acknowledgments
Bibliography
Notes on Contributors
Index
