Frontmatter -- Table of Contents -- List of Illustrations -- Pleasure and Leisure from the Middle Ages to the early Nineteenth Century -- Medieval Magicians as Entertainers: Magic as Demonic Illusion or Stagecraft -- Hestaþing (Horse Meeting/s) in Medieval Icelandic Culture -- The Transformation of the World through Pleasure and Performance in the Thousand and One Nights -- Behüde mich vor vngerechtem gude. Were Goods Won in Game “Unjustified”? Medieval Gambling -- Aldhelm’s Enigmata and the Commentaries from the Canterbury School: A Monastic Curriculum in Play -- Understanding Monastic Recreations and Luxury within the Anglo-Saxon Patristic Tradition -- Subjects of the Game: The Pleasures of Subjection in William IX’s “Ben vueill que sapchon li pluzor” -- Peregrine Pleasures: The Sport of Falconry, Lovers, and Self-Identity in Medieval German Literature -- Tourney, Joust, Foreis and Round Table: Tournament Forms in the Frauendienst of Ulrich von Liechtenstein -- Drinking, Partying, and Drunkenness in Late Medieval German Verse Narratives and Jest Narratives -- William Langland’s Attitude Toward Play, Leisure, and Pastime: A Realignment of Priorities in Post-Plague England -- The Ambraser Hofämterspiel: Playing Cards as a Visual Source for Courtly Life during the Late Middle Ages -- Gawain, Giants, and Tennis in the Fifteenth Century -- “J’ai tiré si près / Que je touche au but”: Ludic Roots, Spiritual Play in Marguerite de Navarre’s L’Inquisiteur -- Jeux Interdits: The Rationale and Limits of Clerical and Lay Efforts to Enjoin “Scurrilia Solatia” -- Randomization in Paper: Shuffling as a Material Practice with Moral Implications in the Late Middle Ages and Early Modern World -- Calculated Losses: Molière, Regnard, and the Changing Comic Gamblers of Seventeenth-Century France -- “His usuall Retyrement”: Henry Vaughan’s Life and Writing during the English Civil War -- Jokes and the Eighteenth-Century Unconscious: Enlightening the Early-Modern European Id -- Enjoying the Waters: Cross-Class Leisure and Pleasure at the Eighteenth Century British Spa -- Nine Men’s Medievalisms: Conquests of the Longbow, Nine Men’s Morris, and the Impossibilities of a Half-Forgotten Game’s Ludic Past -- Biographical Notes about the Contributors -- Index

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Jan Huizinga and Roger Caillois have already taught us to realize how important games and play have been for pre-modern civilization. Recent research has begun to acknowledge the fundamental importance of these aspects in cultural, religious, philosophical, and literary terms. This volume expands on the traditional approach still very much focused on the materiality of game (toys, cards, dice, falcons, dolls, etc.) and acknowledges that game constituted also a form of coming to terms with human existence in an unstable and volatile world determined by universal randomness and fortune. Whether considering blessings or horse fighting, falconry or card games, playing with dice or dolls, we can gain a much deeper understanding of medieval and early modern society when we consider how people pursued pleasure and how they structured their leisure time. The contributions examine a wide gamut of approaches to pleasure, considering health issues, eroticism, tournaments, playing music, reading and listening, drinking alcohol, gambling and throwing dice. This large issue was also relevant, of course, in non-Christian societies, and constitutes a critical concern both for the past and the present because we are all homines ludentes.

Issued also in print.

Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.

In English.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 28. Feb 2023)