Play Like it's 1701: Literary Games from the Early-Modern Period

When the writers of the seventeenth-century, like Madame de Lafayette and Mlle de Scudéry, assembled in the salons of Paris, they certainly discussed literature, but they also enjoyed playing literary games. Devising a mash-up from Petrarch’s Canzioniere or improvising a narrative together were common entertainments at these gatherings. The JEUX project investigates what impact playing these games may have had on the developing genre of the novel. From gaming handbooks and descriptions of gameplay in texts, we have reconstructed a series of literary games. This workshop will give an introduction to the games, the Italian sources for the games, and what we know about gameplay in the salons. We will then also try out three games together -- the Game of Pro and Contra, the Game of Thought and the Game of Metamorphoses – and compare our own gameplay to how these games were played in a novel from 1701.