Drawing on developments in critical theory and postmodernist
fiction, this study makes an important contribution to the
appreciation of playforms in language, texts, and cultural
practices. Tracing trajectories in theories of play and game, and
with particular attention to the writings of Nietzsche,
Wittgenstein, Bakhtin, and Derrida, the author argues that the
concept of play provides perspectives on language and communication
processes useful both for analysis of literary texts and also for
understanding the interactive nature of constructions of
knowledge
Exploring manifestations of game and play throughout the history
of Western culture, from Plato to Pynchon, this study traces
developments in 20th-century cultural and literary theory of ideas
about play in the writings of Johan Huizinga, Roger Caillois,
Jacques Ehrmann, Bernard Suits, James Hans, Mihai Spariosu and
Robert Rawdon Wilson. The author emphasizes post-structuralist
developments with specific attention to deconstruction and
reception theory and argues that deconstruction makes the most
significant recent contribution to play theory in its application
to language and to literature
The work also explores the modes and effects of playforms in
particular examples of postmodernist fiction. With attention to
major works from Thomas Pynchon ("Gravity's Rainbow"), John Barth
("LETTERS," Robert Kroetsch ("What the" "Crow Said "), Angela
Carter ("Nights at the Circus" ) and Peter Carey ("Illywhacker "),
Edwards acknowledges and deconstructs such basic oppositions as
play and seriousness, fiction and truth, difference and identity to
explore the literature's cultural/political significance. Seeking
to affirm thefiction's continuing social relevance, the readings
presented in this book place play irresistibly at the heartland of
language, meaning and culture.
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