Work · Science & Human Sciences
Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture
Play is older than culture: a free activity with its own rules, time and space; Huizinga traces it in law, war, poetry, philosophy and art, and warns that modern culture is losing its play-element.
Introduction
Huizinga published “Homo ludens” in 1938 in Haarlem, developing a lecture he had given in 1933; a German edition appeared in 1939 and an English one in 1949. The book defines play as a free activity, outside ordinary life, with its own boundaries of time and space and its own rules, and argues that culture arises in and as play. Huizinga traces the play element in language, law, war, knowledge, poetry, philosophy and art, and closes with a critical look at modern culture, in which play is in decline. The book founded the study of play in the humanities and influenced Roger Caillois, Gadamer and later game studies.
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