{"product_id":"dice-cards-wheels-a-different-history-of-french-culture-9780812238600","title":"Dice, Cards, Wheels: A Different History of French Culture","description":"\u003cp\u003eGambling has been a practice central to many cultures throughout history. In \u003ci\u003eDice, Cards, Wheels\u003c\/i\u003e, Thomas M. Kavanagh scrutinizes the changing face of the gambler in France over a period of eight centuries, using gambling and its representations in literature as a lens through which to observe French culture. Kavanagh argues that the way people gamble tells us something otherwise unrecognized about the values, conflicts, and cultures that define a period or class. To gamble is to enter a world traced out by the rules and protocols of the game the gambler plays. That world may be an alternative to the established order, but the shape and structure of the game reveal indirectly hidden tensions, fears, and prohibitions. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eDrawing on literature from the Middle Ages to the present, Kavanagh reconstructs the figure of the gambler and his evolving personae. He examines, among other examples, Bodel's dicing in a twelfth-century tavern for the conversion of the Muslim world; Pascal's post-Reformation redefinition of salvation as the gambler's prize; the aristocratic libertine's celebration of the bluff; and Balzac's, Barbey d'Aurevilly's, and Bourget's nineteenth-century revisions of the gambler. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ci\u003eDice, Cards, Wheels\u003c\/i\u003e embraces the tremendous breadth of French history and emerges as a broad-ranging study of the different forms of gambling, from the dice games of the Middle Ages to the digital slot machines of the twenty-first century, and what those games tell us about French culture and history.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Thomas M. Kavanagh\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e University of Pennsylvania Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 03\/07\/2005\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 264\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eBinding Type:\u003c\/b\u003e Hardcover\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 1.20lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 9.10h x 6.20w x 1.10d\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN:\u003c\/b\u003e 9780812238600\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThomas M. Kavanagh is Professor of French at Yale University. Among his previous books is Esthetics of the Moment: Literature and Art in the French Enlightenment, also available from the University of Pennsylvania Press.\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"University of Pennsylvania Press","offers":[{"title":"Hardcover","offer_id":44411359297651,"sku":"9780812238600","price":98.95,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0555\/9255\/0515\/files\/img_6cdd83ec-0e51-4da9-b3b3-b16158a39d82.jpg?v=1772026559","url":"https:\/\/bookstorenmore.com\/en-de\/products\/dice-cards-wheels-a-different-history-of-french-culture-9780812238600","provider":"Bookstore N More","version":"1.0","type":"link"}