Ludic Cultures, 1100-1700
Ludic Cultures treats medieval and early modern play in all its rich variety: enjoyment and entertainment, laughter and humor, carnival and the carnivalesque, games and amusements, and the relationship between the serious world and the “magic circle” of play. Volumes in the series are grounded in historical realities and theoretical scholarship, transcending traditional disciplinary boundaries and illuminating the culture of play. We invite proposals that explore play in any facet of medieval or early modern cultural production.
Keywords: Ludic, cultural history, social history, history of games and play, board games studies, cultural production, medieval and early modern games.
Geographical Scope: Western Europe and the Americas
Chronological Scope: 1100-1700
The series welcomes the submission of both monographs and essay collections that view cultures in Europe and the Americas between 1100 and 1700 through the lens of play.
All Books in this Series
Gaming the Medieval English Text: "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight"and the Cotton Nero A X/2 Manuscript
By Julie Nelson Couch and Kimberly K. Bell
This book combines medieval manuscript study with contemporary cultural game theory to show how the Middle English romance, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, launches a multidimensional game with its late-fourteenth-century elite reader. The reading games in SGGK extend to the layout of the poem as found in its one extant manuscript, London, British Library, MS Cotton Nero A X/2. This study offers a more comprehensive examination of games and gaming in SGGK and the manuscript as a whole, its four poems and its illustrations, than has been published to date. Reading, before printed editions, was an activity that involved interacting with the visual layout of the text on the page. The authors find that a medieval reader’s ludic interaction with this singular medieval codex could amuse but also serve as a means to serious ends, specifically redemptive knowledge. Couch and Bell conclude that the textual and visual games of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and the Cotton Nero A X/2 manuscript allow a fourteenth-century English Christian aristocracy to align courtly gaming with heavenly goals, thereby justifying elite amusements.
ISBN 978-1-50151-854-6 (hardcover), 978-1-50151-416-6 (PDF), 978-1-50151-444-9 (EPUB) © 2025
Available in July!
Playthings in Early Modernity: Party Games, Word Games, Mind Games
By Allison Levy
An innovative volume of fifteen interdisciplinary essays at the nexus of material culture, performance studies, and game theory, Playthings in Early Modernity emphasizes the rules of the game(s) as well as the breaking of those rules. Thus, 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 endeavor.
LC Monograph 1, ISBN 978-1-58044-260-2 (clothbound), 978-1-58044-261-9 (PDF) © 2017
