Recreation in the Renaissance

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Varieties of Pastimes 105 Figure 6.3 ‘Three of a kind’, from Stella’s Les jeux et plaisirs de l’enfance. While the child on the right plays at bowling a hoop, a game very common throughout Europe and particularly favoured by Netherlandish writers, the group on the left is engaged in a card game. Mocking the adults’ concern for the winnings, the poetic comment states that they joined the game in the hope of gaining, but will end up losing. while retaining some group-specific identity and customs such as youth confraternities and festivals. Furthermore, a process of gradual adult detachment from some games tended to leave them as a residual monopoly of children, at the same time at which the élite abandoned similar pastimes in the hands of the folk. 38 For other researchers too, the perspective of the history of toys seems to point to the seventeenth century as a new age: the idea of a formative role of children’s play moved a step forward with the theories on education of Comenius and Locke. 39 Towards the end of the period here under consideration, J.H. Plumb suggested a specific role of John Locke’s Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693) as a turning-point, after which the education of children became increasingly social rather
106 Recreation in the Renaissance than religious. Eighteenth-century England would have witnessed a new parental attention to children, which has counterparts both in the growth of educational facilities and in the first appearance of toy shops. 40 A reflection of the peculiarity of the English case could already be perceived from the fact that Locke’s French translator was not aware of his author’s distinction between commercial toys and the broader family of play-things, or at least had no way of retaining it in his own language. 41 These social and cultural developments did not, however, eliminate the moral concern over the world of children’s play. While literature on play and games rarely has this human group as its primary subject, we find a relative exception in a lengthy book published in 1685, Frain du Tremblay’s Conversations morales sur les jeux et les divertissemens, which we encountered in Chapter 2 for its claim that the need to play derives from sin. It is written in the form of a dialogue between two male interlocutors (Théophile, Eugène); both because of the length of the text and in observance of a literary topos, the conversations are imagined as taking place over nine different, subsequent days. At Eugène’s request, Théophile instructs him in matters of precise moral theology, in the rigorous style which, within seventeenth-century French Catholicism, was particularly, though not exclusively, typical of the Jansenist movement. The conversations are imagined as the follow-up of previous discussion on the education of children. This is the reason why (or rather the rhetorical device by which), although a general assessment of the subject of play is regarded as necessary, the specific context of discourse is children’s games, the explicit subject of the last conversation. The position of the main speaker is particularly radical, sometimes provoking his interlocutor’s surprise. Ideally he would not allow any recreation whatsoever for either adults or children, and he exploits prohibitions by both civil and ecclesiastical law for his own purposes. A dominant preoccupation of the author’s porte-parole is work or duty, and the obligation not to distract oneself from it. 42 As for the range of pastimes which were practised and acknowledged in the culture and society we have surveyed, the exempla of John the Evangelist’s attention for a pet, or of Anthony’s conversation with fellow monks, show how little structure or equipment one needs for obtaining some solace. A wide range of human activities could be considered as appropriate for the scope, and descriptive books have
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Also by Alessandro Arcangeli DAVIDE
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© Alessandro Arcangeli 2003 All ri
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vi Contents 7 Conclusion 116 Append
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Preface This work springs from a pr
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4 The Moral Discourse In François
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Page 145 and 146: 134 Notes childishness. Contrary to
Page 147 and 148: 136 Notes in T. Porcacchi (ed.), Pr
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Page 151 and 152: 140 Notes 4 The Moral Discourse 1.
Page 153 and 154: 142 Notes apologist of drama, Thoma
Page 155 and 156: 144 Notes other Mediterranean cultu
Page 157 and 158: 146 Notes libros commentaria, 2 vol
Page 159 and 160: 148 Notes 34. Salvadori, La chasse,
Page 161 and 162: 150 Notes Courtly Dance of the Rena
Page 163 and 164: 152 Notes 54. H. I. Clodius, Primae
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156 Notes 26. [L delectare], OF del
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158 Bibliography Arcangeli, A., ‘
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160 Bibliography Burton, R., The An
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162 Bibliography De Grazia, S., Of
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164 Bibliography Grenaille, F. de,
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166 Bibliography Luque Faxardo, F.
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168 Bibliography Pantoja de Aiala,
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170 Bibliography Tabiensis, I., Sum
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172 Bibliography Zannoni, G., ‘Li
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174 Index Aristotle - continued Poe
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176 Index clothes, 47, 88, 91, 93,
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178 Index Erasmus, Desiderius Collo
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180 Index Hespanha, António Manuel
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182 Index Leys (Lessius), Lenaert,
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184 Index paidia, 6 Palamedes, 59 p
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186 Index Sauzet, Robert, 141 Saxl,
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188 Index Veblen, Thorstein, The Th
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