Arthuriana

Focusing on the ‘tension between games and the real world,’ this volume presents nine inquiries into games played in medieval life, literary representations of games, and, most intriguingly, texts that are themselves games. It contextualizes these investigations with an introduction by Serina Patterson and an afterword by Betsy McCormick that do the heavy lifting of identifying common themes and outlining how game studies might evolve as a field.

In her introduction, Patterson usefully lays out three threads that run throughout the essays in the volume: games and the problem of definition; games and earnest; and games and reality. The first of these points out the continuing difficulty of defining what exactly a game is but emphasizes that games are formal moments in contrast to the more fluid category of play. The second thread asks whether games are frivolous or meaningful activities (falling on the side of the latter), while the third identifies the porous boundaries between games and the ‘real’ world. The stated aim is to ‘showcase non-digital games as a serious area of study and, as the first collection dedicated to premodern games in literature … to lay the groundwork for future research’ (p. 11). The collection meets these goals admirably.

The volume is divided into two parts. The first, ‘Spaces of Play,’ considers concrete games, both physical and text-based, among clergy, students, poets, and the gentry. Robert Bubczyk begins the collection with an essay on the vexed attitudes toward chess among the clergy, identifying a broad trend toward stricter policies in later centuries and substantiating his analyses with a variety of illuminating examples. [End Page 109] Nicholas Orme, with characteristic clarity, then lays out the games schoolboys played, arguing that in contrast to later periods, medieval schools were largely ambivalent about the usefulness of games; he extends his analysis to consider games among the higher classes, girls, and university students. Shifting gears, Daniel O’Sullivan focuses on how scribes in Arras shaped the reception of Thibaut de Champagne’s jeux-partis. He argues that these compilers played a game in their works with Thibault’s poetry by downplaying it as one contribution among many other Artesian examples in order to claim cultural prestige for their region. In the final essay in the first part, Patterson traces out the evolution of the Ragman le Bon game, concluding that it was a game played by the gentry that provided a ‘safe space’ to engage with social mores and that its popularity demonstrates the gentry’s desire to be immersed in fictional game-worlds. Should anyone have doubted the importance of games in medieval culture, this section proves that they were ubiquitous—and contentious.

The second part, ‘Game and Genre,’ moves into theoretical and imaginative territories, investigating how games represented in literature are lenses for examining social, ethical, and political issues. Tamsyn Rose-Steel begins the section with a reading of four medieval French motets that invoke gaming in the tavern and chess, paying close attention to how the interaction of music and text within those motets creates meaning and embodies the function of the motet form itself. Next, Jenny Adams provides a tight close reading of the thirteenth-century Flemish romance Walewein, focusing on the symbolism of the magical chessboard that appears at Arthur’s court. Adams challenges the idea of games as bounded in space, illustrating how they ‘reimagine a social order, forge a relationship between two players, and/or teach lessons to those who watch’ (p. 128). In a similar vein, Nora Corrigan then argues that Chaucer’s The Knight’s Tale, particularly during the tournament between Palamon and Arcite, illustrates that games are not just safe spaces and that gaming is a serious matter that may mask hidden perils and agendas. She then considers storytelling in The Canterbury Tales as a multidimensional game. While Corrigan sees The Canterbury Tales as playing up the ‘positive social value of gaming’ (p. 164), Kimberly Bell analyzes...