Challenging a longstanding and respected tradition that regards human play as the fount of creativity and origin of all civilization, this analysis traces the history of an alternative theory of play in Shakespeare, Nietzsche, and Freud. Arguing that traditional theories espousing a cheerful belief in progress and the unquestionable good of order are out of place in today's disillusioned world, this asserts that play is not the starting point for a civilized world so much as an end in itself, a cultivation of aesthetic forms that do nothing to disguise their artificiality and that are loved only for the fictions that they are. Nietzsche, Freud, and Shakespeare are shown in direct and indirect ways to anticipate the playful philosophy that has become a hallmark of postmodern times.
Author Biography: Catherine Bates, a senior lecturer in the department of English and comparative literary studies at the University of Warwick, is the author of
The Rhetoric of Courtship in Elizabethan Language and Literature
and
Sir Philip Sidney: Selected Poems
.