Lector Ludens<\/a>,\u00a0Michael Scham\u2019s study of games and play in Cervantes, is Scham\u2019s thorough review of the early modern literature on play, games, and leisure. Scham is not innocent of cultural theory, but instead of imposing a contemporary framework on his subject, he uncovers an extensive, and quite wondrous, tradition of reflection on games.<\/p>\nSome treatises on play are, as one would expect, moralistic. Unexpectedly, many aren\u2019t, and see play as socially beneficial, expressive of human creativity, useful in the same way sleep is useful.<\/p>\n
On this last point, Scham quotes Thomas: \u201cThe activity of playing looked at specifically in itself is not ordained to a further end, yet the pleasure we take therein serves as recreation and rest for the soul, and accordingly when this be well-tempered, application to play is lawful.\u201d He goes on to quote Cicero to the effect that sport and fund are useful \u201cwhen we have discharged our obligations in grave and serious matters\u201d (ST <\/em>II-II, 168, 2; quoted 32).<\/p>\nRodrigo Caro, an Andalusian priest writing in the early seventh century, traces the origins of ball games, theater, dancing, practical jokes. He observes, \u201cThe ancients knew games to be necessary, and more so amongst fresh and energetic youth; and so, to keep them away from the vices caused by curiosity, they organized games that, along with entertaining and delighting, dispose nature to agility and strength for earnest occasions and to preserve health\u201d (32). In Caro\u2019s opinion, adult playfulness was a way of becoming a little child: \u201cwhat better entertainment than in that which originally deserves this name? What more harmless diversion than in simple childhood games?\u201d (quote, 52, 54).<\/p>\n
For Adrian de Castro (1599), play could further society by furthering the pleasure of sociability. But one had to be careful to choose the right playmates. Leisure with suitable friends brought personal, domestic, and public benefits: \u201cOne loses the friendship and conversation of friends, who take time to win over, because by virtue of intercourse and communication they are earned. Such is friendship that Saint Chrysostom says of it, that it is a wall and fortress of the republic necessary for the conservation of peace, useful for public life, beneficial for domestic life, wealth for our poverty, glee for our sadness, medicine for our maladies, pleasurable for human life\u201d (quoted 39-40).<\/p>\n
Scham\u2019s starting point for his study is Cervantes\u2019s characterization of Don Quixote<\/em> as play: \u201cMy purpose has been to place in the square of our republic a billiards table where each can go to entertain himself.\u201d After setting a rich context by examining writers on play and games, he devotes the remainder of the book to examining the different registers of humor, gaming, and carnival in Cervantes\u2019s masterpiece. Nabokov complained of the \u201ccruel and crude\u201d humor of Quixote <\/em>(quoted, 150), but Scham shows that the novel isn\u2019t simply a Spanish Three Stooges. Cervantes takes regular aim at \u201cvarious forms of pedantry, from the minutiae of hair-splitting scholarship to the over-determined formulas of theory\u201d (152). Don Quixote, for instead, goes on at length extrapolating the point that \u201call the world\u2019s a sage,\u201d to which Sancho witheringly replies: \u201cThat\u2019s a fine comparison. . . . only not so vary original that I haven\u2019t heard it about a hundred times before\u201d (quoted, 152).\u00a0<\/p>\nScham points to the important strain of (proto-postmodern) \u201cepistemological humor,\u201d which begins with the first sentence of the book where the author admits he can\u2019t recall certain details, offers several versions of Quixote\u2019s name, but ends with an insistence that these details don\u2019t matter \u201cprovided that the narrator doesn\u2019t stray one inch from the truth\u201d (161).<\/p>\n
Cervantes doesn\u2019t simply reflect contemporary Spanish and European discussions of play, but contributes to them. \u201cThe entire range of contemporary thought on licit and illicit leisure finds expression in Cervantes.\u201d His characters have conventional views on various topics: \u201ccards and gambling lead to violence and dissolution; respectable women sometimes while away their time with needlework.\u201d Cervantes himself doesn\u2019t dissolve moral concerns into irony, but \u201cis acutely attuned to [play\u2019s] dangers, from the solipcism of unreflective mimesis to the cruelty of turning others into objects of play.\u201d For all this, he opens up new possibilities for literary play: \u201cCervantes\u2019s ludic readers are \u00a0. . . idle and active simultaneously: we are at leisure, our activity of free of material consequence; yet we actively mediate the mysterious relationship between our game and the reality to which we will return\u201d (301). We aren\u2019t wholly receptive; if we come to Cervantes\u2019s billiard table, we\u2019re encouraged to play along.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One of the central virtues of\u00a0Lector Ludens,\u00a0Michael Scham\u2019s study of games and play in Cervantes, is Scham\u2019s thorough review of the early modern literature on play, games, and leisure. Scham is not innocent of cultural theory, but instead of imposing a contemporary framework on his subject, he uncovers an extensive, and quite wondrous, tradition of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3021,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1224,8,836],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cervantes","category-literature","category-play"],"yoast_head":"\n
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