Games and War in Early Modern English Literature: From Shakespeare to Swift(2 Cultures of Play)

This pioneering collection of nine original essays carves out a new conceptual path in the field by theorizing the ways in which the language of games and warfare inform and illuminate each other in the early modern cultural imagination. They consider how warfare and games are mapped onto each other in aesthetically and ideologically significant ways in the plays, poetry, or prose of William Shakespeare, Thomas Morton, John Milton, Margaret Cavendish, Aphra Behn, and Jonathan Swift, among others. Contributors interpret the terms ‘war games’ or ‘games of war’ broadly, freeing them to uncover the more complex and abstract interplay of war and games in the early modern mind, taking readers from the cockpits and clowns of Shakespearean drama, through the intriguing manuals of cryptographers and the ingenious literary war games of Restoration women authors, to the witty but rancorous paper wars of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgements The Interplay of Games and War in Early Modern English Literature: An Introduction Jim Daems and Holly Faith Nelson 'Can this cock-pit hold the vasty fields of France?' Cockfighting and the Representation of War in Shakespeare's Henry V Louise Fang Game Over: Play and War in Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida Sean Lawrence Thomas Morton's Maypole: Revels, War Games, and Trans-Atlantic Conflict Jim Daems Milton's Epic Games: War and Recreation in Paradise Lost David Currell Ciphers and Gaming for Pleasure and War Katherine Ellison Virtual Reality, Roleplay, and World Building in Margaret Cavendish's Literary War Games Holly Faith Nelson and Sharon Alker Dice, Jesting, and the 'Pleasing Delusion' of War-Like Love in Aphra Behn's The Luckey Chance Karol Cooper War and Games in Swift's The Battle of the Books and Gulliver's Travels. Lori A. Davis Perry Time-Servers, Turncoats, and the Hostile Reprint: Considering the Conflict of a Paper War Jeffrey Galbraith Notes on Contributors Index

About the Author :
Holly Faith Nelson, Ph.D., is Professor of English and Co-Director of the Gender Studies Institute at Trinity Western University. Her work on women’s writing, gender and literature, and religion and literature has appeared in a wide range of journals and essay collections over the past two decades Jim Daems is an Assistant Professor and Chair of the English Department at the University College of the North. He has published articles and books on a range of early modern and long-eighteenth century topics and authors.