The Playful Reader
Sponsoring Organization(s)
Game Cultures Society
Organizer Name
Serina Patterson
Organizer Affiliation
Univ. of British Columbia
Presider Name
Serina Patterson
Paper Title 1
Playful Reading as Pastime at the French Court: The Performance of Literary Games and Poetic Competitions in the Late Middle Ages
Presenter 1 Name
Vanina M. Kopp
Presenter 1 Affiliation
Deutsches Historisches Institut Paris
Paper Title 2
Querelle over and in the Findern MS (CUL Ff.1.6): An Analysis of Women's Names and Female Voices
Presenter 2 Name
Cynthia A. Rogers
Presenter 2 Affiliation
Indiana Univ.-Bloomington
Paper Title 3
Like the Castle in Its Corner: Game as Genre in Medieval Literature
Presenter 3 Name
Betsy McCormick
Presenter 3 Affiliation
Mount San Antonio College
Start Date
12-5-2016 10:00 AM
Session Location
Bernhard 210
Description
In medieval texts, the paradigm of reading as a game is already both implicit and explicit: the rhetorical assumptions of the text presume an author’s play of intertexuality as well as a readership expecting to be tested via the play between memory and intertexuality. In fact, critics ranging from Walter Ong to Wolfgang Iser use, or assume, a game analogy to describe the process of reading a literary text. Participation is mutual for this 'game' to work since a text’s meaning is defined by the reader’s interactive participation in this play space. Consequently, medieval reading is an interplay between the inherited tradition and the present for both the author and the reader. So how do we consider the ways in which the medieval reader recognizes an author’s choices of, and between, conventions and tradition? The individual reader must be somehow be alerted to the nature of the game and taught to interpret the narrative code he, or she, is reading. What are the processes by which such 'play' is signaled?
Serina Patterson
The Playful Reader
Bernhard 210
In medieval texts, the paradigm of reading as a game is already both implicit and explicit: the rhetorical assumptions of the text presume an author’s play of intertexuality as well as a readership expecting to be tested via the play between memory and intertexuality. In fact, critics ranging from Walter Ong to Wolfgang Iser use, or assume, a game analogy to describe the process of reading a literary text. Participation is mutual for this 'game' to work since a text’s meaning is defined by the reader’s interactive participation in this play space. Consequently, medieval reading is an interplay between the inherited tradition and the present for both the author and the reader. So how do we consider the ways in which the medieval reader recognizes an author’s choices of, and between, conventions and tradition? The individual reader must be somehow be alerted to the nature of the game and taught to interpret the narrative code he, or she, is reading. What are the processes by which such 'play' is signaled?
Serina Patterson