The Rules of the Game

It has been than a decade since Jacques Ehrmann wrote that Play, reality, [and] culture are synonymous and interchangeable ... .[Thus] any of communication (or of information) implies a of play.., .and a theory.1 Ehrmann's insight into vital relation of play to culture represents a critical and philosophical tradition that has for most part been ignored by modern literary theorists. Criticism's failure to develop a of literary games is puzzling for two reasons. First, as Jonathan Culler has recently remarked, current critical is primarily engaged in development of an as yet nascent poetics, that is, a systematic theory of relations... between literature and other modes of discourse which make up text of intersubjective experience.2 A poetics so conceived would demonstrate literature's importance as a cultural institution by revealing role played by fiction-making in our daily construction of and participation in reality. This poetics would elevate fiction to a position equal to that of more serious pursuits such as work and politics. And this, I shall argue, would also be most important result of a of literary games. Second, critical theorist, like novelist and poet, inevitably plays games of several kinds with language, and any poetics aiming at inclusivity must acknowlege this dimension of critical as well as literary act. The purpose of following essay is to suggest role that a of will play in development of a complete literary poetics. The expression game theory, as it is most frequently used, denotes a sophisticated mathematical approach to social phenomena with which certain games are strictly identical.3 Its usefulness was first foreseen by Leibniz in 1710, and James Waldegrave developed the notion of minimax strategy two years later.4 Numerous works have since extended concept into other fields such as physics and military science; most important extension in our time is found in John von

Epistemology · Game theory · Mathematical economics · Sociology · Mathematics · Opinion Dynamics and Social Influence · Philosophy · Wittgensteinian philosophy and applications

• La Rochefoucauld

  Philip E Lewis, Philip Lewis•Yale French Studies•1968

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