Games and Game Playing in European Art and Literature, 16th-17th Centuries (Cultures of Play)

This collection of essays examines the vogue for games and game playing as expressed in art and literature in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe. Focusing on games as a leitmotif of creative expression, these scholarly inquiries are framed as a response to two main questions: how were games used to convey special meanings in art and literature, and how did games speak to greater issues in European society? In chapters dealing with chess, playing cards, board games, dice, gambling, and outdoor and sportive games, essayists show how games were used by artists, writers, game makers and collectors, in the service of love and war, didactic and moralistic instruction, commercial enterprise, politics and diplomacy, and assertions of civic and personal identity. Offering innovative iconographical and literary interpretations, their analyses reveal how games 'played, written about, illustrated and collected' functioned as metaphors for a host of broader cultural issues related to gender relations and feminine power, class distinctions and status, ethical and sexual comportment, philosophical and religious ideas, and conditions of the mind Table of Contents List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction. A Passion for Games Part I: Chess and Luxury Playing Cards 1. “Mad Chess” with a Mad Dwarf Jester 2. Changing Hands. Jean Desmarets, Stefano della Bella, and the Jeux de Cartes Part II: Gambling and Games of Chance 3. “A game played home”. The Gendered Stakes of Gambling in Shakespeare’s Plays 4. “Now if the devil have bones,/ These dice are made of his”. Dice Games on the English Stage in the Seventeenth Century 5. The World Upside Down. Giuseppe Maria Mitelli’s Games and the Performance of Identity in the Early Modern World Part III: Outdoor and Sportive Games 6. “To catch the fellow, and come back again”. Games of Prisoner’s Base in Early Modern English Drama 7. Against Opposition (at Home). Middleton and Rowley’s The World Tossed at Tennis as Tennis Part IV: Games on Display 8. Ordering the World. Games in the Architectural Iconography of Stirling Castle, Scotland 9. The Games of Philipp Hainhofer. Ludic Appreciation and Use in Early Modern Art Cabinets Index This collection of essays examines the vogue for games and game playing as expressed in art, architecture, and literature in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe. Moving beyond previous scholarship on game theory, game monographs, and period and regional studies on games, this volume analyzes a range of artistic and literary works produced in England, Scotland, Italy, France, and Germany, which used the game topos to illuminate special themes. In essays dealing with chess, playing cards, dice, gambling, and board and children's games, scholars show how games not only functioned as recreational pastimes, but were also used for demonstrations of wit and skill, courtship rituals, didactic and moralistic instruction, commercial enterprises, and displays of status. Offering new iconographical and literary interpretations, these studies reveal how game play became a metaphor for broader cultural issues related to gender, age, and class differences, social order, politics and religion, and ethical and sexual behavior.