Title: Playthings in early modernity : party games, word games, mind games /
Authors: Levy, Allison M. 1968-
Year: 2017
Subjects: Games Europe History; Amusements Europe History; Europe Social life and customs
Abstract: An innovative volume of fifteen interdisciplinary essays at the nexus of material culture, performance studies, and game theory, "Playthings in Early Modernity" emphasises the rules of the game(s) as well as the breaking of those rules. This, the titular "plaything" is understood as both an object and a person, and play, in the early modern world, is treated not merely as a pastime, a leisurely pursuit, but as a pivotal part of daily life, a strategic psychosocial endeavour.
Contents: Introduction : playing the field / Allison Levy -- Performing pictures : parlor games and visual engagement in Ascanio de' Mori's Giuoco piacevole / Kelli Wood -- "Mixt" and matched : dance games in late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Europe / Emily F. Winerock -- Ludic intermingling/ludic discrimination : women's card playing and visual proscriptions in early modern Europe / Antonella Fenech Kroke -- Leonardo da Vinci, parody, and pictorial magic / Chriscinda Henry -- Letter games : Machiavelli and Guicciardini in carnivalesque correspondence / Sergius Kodera -- The rules of passion and pastime : the game of lurch in a late Renaissance poem / Manfred Zollinger -- "Sportes and pastimes, done by number" : mathematical games in early modern England / Jessica Marie Otis -- Predictive play : wheels of fortune in the early modern lottery book / Jessen Kelly -- Virtuous vices : Giuseppe Maria Mitelli's gambling prints and the social mapping of leisure and gender in post-tridentine Bologna / Patricia Rocco -- Trading and trick taking in the Dutch republic : Pasquin's wind cards and the South Sea bubble / Joyce Goggin -- The problem of excessive play : Renaissance strategies of ludic governmentality / Andreas Hermann Fischer -- Imaginary cartographies and commercial commodities : geography and playing cards in early modern England / Serina Patterson -- Land of elusion : Portuguese perceptions and the matter of play and gaming in Vijayanagara / Elke Rogersdotter -- Visual frames and breaking the rules of the reconquista : chess and Alfonso X, El Sabio's Libro de ajedrez, dados y tablas / Nhora Lucía Serrano -- The prisoners' dilemma : strategies and ruses in the inquisitorial jails of early modern Cuenca / Patrick J. O'Banion.