Games and Game Playing in European Art and Literature, 16th-17th Centuries
Robin O'Bryan
Naomi Lebens
Megan Herrold
Kevin Chovanec
Patricia Rocco
Bethany Packard
Mark Kaethler
Giovanna Guidicini
Greger Sundin
9789463728119
304 pages
Amsterdam University Press
Overview
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.
Author Bio
Robin O’Bryan (PhD) is an Art Historian focusing on issues related to popular culture in Italian Renaissance art, especially dwarfs. Her published articles have appeared in journals and anthologies including Games and Game Playing in Early Modern Art and Literature which she also edited for Amsterdam University Press.
