Games and Game Playing in European Art and Literature, 16th-17th Centuries
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chess
cultural identity formation
early modern social history
eq_art-fashion-photography
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
gender and power dynamics
iconography analysis
ludic metaphors
metaphorical use of games in art and literature
Renaissance visual culture
Product details
- ISBN 9781041179986
- Weight: 530g
- Dimensions: 174 x 246mm
- Publication Date: 01 Dec 2025
- Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
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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.
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.
