Take a photo of a barcode or cover
A review by quoteradar
Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture by Johan Huizinga
2.0
As college students, how many of us ever made it through the entire "recommended reading" list for a class? And for a class with 17 recommended titles and "Homo Ludens" being the most difficult to acquire (the vast University of Minnesota library system doesn't have a copy), even the most thorough of us could be forgiven for leaving it by the wayside.
But four years after taking the Toy Product Design class that cited Homo Ludens, I find myself helping to teach it, and I figured I ought to have a more complete knowledge of the background information.
Unfortunately, I have to satisfy myself with giving it the old college try. The book is written as an almost stream-of-consciousness contemplation on the idea of play, and after giving a vague notion of his definition of the concept, Huizinga goes on to meander through related subjects without a clear hypothesis or point.
I will say that I thoroughly enjoyed the chapter on the concept of play as expressed in language. I nearly went for a linguistics minor in college, and the chapter on other ideas expressed through words related to play and their possible connection to the "play-concept" fascinated me. In this chapter, Huizinga gets closest to making any kind of cogent argument: the words for play in many languages refer both to a specific kind of recreational or ritual activity that he defines as the "play-concept" and to rapid or capricious movements of objects, systems, or creatures.
After that chapter, my interest in the book rapidly declined as successive topics were abruptly discarded, as by a toddler who has seen something even more colorful across the room. I didn't finish the book; my attention span is perhaps no more blameworthy than Huizinga's. Perhaps the final chapter neatly wrapped up all categories of study and contemplations with a cohesive conclusion. I haven't the patience to find out.
But four years after taking the Toy Product Design class that cited Homo Ludens, I find myself helping to teach it, and I figured I ought to have a more complete knowledge of the background information.
Unfortunately, I have to satisfy myself with giving it the old college try. The book is written as an almost stream-of-consciousness contemplation on the idea of play, and after giving a vague notion of his definition of the concept, Huizinga goes on to meander through related subjects without a clear hypothesis or point.
I will say that I thoroughly enjoyed the chapter on the concept of play as expressed in language. I nearly went for a linguistics minor in college, and the chapter on other ideas expressed through words related to play and their possible connection to the "play-concept" fascinated me. In this chapter, Huizinga gets closest to making any kind of cogent argument: the words for play in many languages refer both to a specific kind of recreational or ritual activity that he defines as the "play-concept" and to rapid or capricious movements of objects, systems, or creatures.
After that chapter, my interest in the book rapidly declined as successive topics were abruptly discarded, as by a toddler who has seen something even more colorful across the room. I didn't finish the book; my attention span is perhaps no more blameworthy than Huizinga's. Perhaps the final chapter neatly wrapped up all categories of study and contemplations with a cohesive conclusion. I haven't the patience to find out.