Intro -- Half Title -- Series Page -- Title Page -- Copyright -- Contents -- Introduction -- 1. Playing with Dolls in Old Regime Fairy Tales -- 2. The Morality of Bilboquet, or the Equivocations of Language -- 3. Fiction as Play: Rhetorical Subversion in Alain-Rene Lesage’s Histoire de Gil Blas de Santillane -- 4. Playthings of Fortune: Lots, Games of Chance, and Inequality in l’Abbe Prevost -- 5. Boundless Play and Infinite Pleasure in the Chevalier de Bethune’s Relation du monde de Mercure -- 6. The Politics of Orientalist Fantasy in French Opera -- 7. Playing at Theater: Modes of Play in Theatre de Societe -- 8. Between Play and Ritual: Profane Masquerade in the French Revolution -- 9. The Return of Play, or the End of Revolutionary Theater -- 10. Video Games as Cultural History: Procedural Narrative and the Eighteenth-Century Fair Theater -- Acknowledgments -- Bibliography -- Notes on Contributors -- Index.