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 innovatively combines traditional manuscript study with contemporary cultural game theory to show how the fourteenth-century Middle English romance Sir Gawain and the Green Knight launches a multidimensional game with its late-fourteenth-century elite reader in its unique manuscript context, London, British Library, Cotton MS Nero A X/2. The textual and visual games of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and the Cotton Nero 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
