Acts of Willful Play

Chapters in this book

1. Prelim pages i
2. Table of contents v
3. Preface vii
4. Pre-Lude
5. From Spells to Spills 1
6. Superliminal Note 9
7. Part I: Authors at Play
8. 1. Playing with the Audience
9. To “Make” an Audience, or a Night's Dalliance 15
10. Brecht and the Scientific Spirit of Playfulness 25
11. 2. Playing with the Canon
12. Hagiographic (Dis)play 37
13. Playing with Fire and Brimstone 47
14. 3. Playing with Authorship
15. Acts of Willful Play 63
16. The Playful Atoms of Jorge Luis Borges 75
17. Inter-Lude
18. Play-Translations 91
19. Part II: The Games of Literature
20. 1. Literature as Game of Pleasure
21. Amorous Agon, Erotic Flyting 99
22. From Play to Plays 113
23. Waiting for the Other Shoe 127
24. 2. Literature and Role-Playing
25. Playing for Life in Donne's Elegies and Songs and Sonnets 137
26. The Games of Consciousness in “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” 157
27. 3. Literature as Existential Play
28. Games for Death and Two Maidens 171
29. Godot's Games and Beckett's Late Plays 183
30. Post-Lude
31. Afterword 191
32. List of Works Cited 195
33. Note on Contributors 199
34. Index 201