Modes of Play in Eighteenth-Century France

FAYÇAL FALAKY is an associate professor of French at Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana, where he specializes in eighteenth-century French literature, culture, and politics. He is the author of Social Contract, Masochist Contract: Aesthetics of Freedom and Submission in Rousseau.REGINALD MCGINNIS is a professor of French at the University of Arizona in Tucson. He is the author of Essai sur l'origine de la mystification and a book, co-authored with John Vignaux Smyth, titled Mock Ritual in the Modern Era. Current projects include a book on the abbé Edme Mallet.

"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"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

• IntroductionFayçal Falaky and Reginald McGinnis1 Playing with Dolls in Old Regime Fairy TalesRori Bloom2 The Morality of Bilboquet, or the Equivocations of LanguageJean-Alexandre Perras3 Fiction as Play: Rhetorical Subversion in Alain-René Lesage's Histoire de Gil Blas de SantillaneZeina Hakim4 Playthings of Fortune: Lots, Games of Chance, and Inequality in l'Abbé PrévostMasano Yamashita5 Boundless Play and Infinite Pleasure in the Chevalier de Béthune's Relation du monde de MercureErika Mandarino6 The Politics of Orientalist Fantasy in French OperaKatharine Hargrave7 Playing at Theater: Modes of Play in Théâtre de SociétéMaria Teodora Comsa8 Between Play and Ritual: Profane Masquerade in the French RevolutionAnnelle Curulla9 The Return of Play, or the End of Revolutionary TheaterYann Robert10 Video Games as Cultural History: Procedural Narrative and the Eighteenth-Century Fair TheaterJeffrey M. LeichmanAcknowledgmentsBibliographyNotes on ContributorsIndex