Modes of Play in Eighteenth-Century France

Collecting diverse critical perspectives on the topic of play—from dolls, bilboquets, and lotteries, to writing itself—this volume offers new insights into how play was used to represent and reimagine the world in eighteenth-century France. In documenting various modes of play, contributors theorize its relation to law, religion, politics, and economics. Equally important was the role of “play” in plays, and the function of theatrical performance in mirroring, and often contesting, our place in the universe. These essays remind us that the spirit of play was very much alive during the “Age of Reason,” providing ways for its practitioners to consider more “serious” themes such as free will and determinism, illusions and equivocations, or chance and inequality. Standing at the intersection of multiple intellectual avenues, this is the first comprehensive study in English devoted to the different guises of play in Enlightenment France, certain to interest curious readers across disciplinary backgrounds.

This collection of essays brings together different critical perspectives on play in eighteenth-century France. From dolls, bilboquets, and lotteries to the ludic nature of narrative and theatrical performance, this volume offers a new outlook on how play was used to represent and reimagine the world.

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.

Introduction
Fayçal Falaky and Reginald McGinnis
1 Playing with Dolls in Old Regime Fairy Tales
Rori Bloom
2 The Morality of Bilboquet, or the Equivocations of Language
Jean-Alexandre Perras
3 Fiction as Play: Rhetorical Subversion in Alain-René Lesage’s Histoire de Gil Blas de Santillane Zeina Hakim
4 Playthings of Fortune: Lots, Games of Chance, and Inequality in l’Abbé Prévost
Masano Yamashita
5 Boundless Play and Infinite Pleasure in the Chevalier de Béthune’s Relation du monde de Mercure Erika Mandarino
6 The Politics of Orientalist Fantasy in French Opera
Katharine Hargrave
7 Playing at Theater: Modes of Play in Théâtre de Société Maria Teodora Comsa
8 Between Play and Ritual: Profane Masquerade in the French Revolution
Annelle Curulla
9 The Return of Play, or the End of Revolutionary Theater
Yann Robert
10 Video Games as Cultural History: Procedural Narrative and the Eighteenth-Century Fair Theater
Jeffrey M. Leichman
Acknowledgments
Bibliography
Notes on Contributors
Index