About the project
In the project JEUX we show how seventeenth-century novelists used play practices to negotiate the multiple possible paths of development open to the genre at this point in its history. We analyse the seventeenth-century novel through play in order to change our understanding of a decisive period in the most popular narrative genre today.
"Le jeu des métamorphoses / The game of metamorphosis" by Charlotte-Rose Caumont de La Force (1701/1856) is an example of such a literary game. (Click on the link to read the game in French and English translation).
Insights gained from the analysis of fictional worlds, formal coherence and narrators contribute to current questions in literary theory from post-critique to new formalism and narrative studies.
Purpose
Through the investigation of the neglected corpus of literary games from seventeenth-century France, JEUX will tell a new history of the novel.
JEUX draws on methods from literary studies, anthropology and game studies.
A series of creative-writing workshops will try out literary games not played in centuries and pioneer a practice-based approach to the literary archive.
