GAME PHENOMENON IN MEDIEVAL CULTURE

Abstract

The Middle Ages added their own ludological culture traditions to those which they had inherited from the Ancient Ages. First of all, such notions were connected with the form of existence and perceiving the Christianity which was a basis for the whole civilization. Epistemological notions of those times were also built in accordance to those norms of world outlook. A cognitive act of an individual was understood as entrance of the subject to the world of general tragic game where he is risen up from sensual forms of being to being of over-sensual beauty, which is defined only through forms of mental cognition and through beauty to over-essential being of its Creator. Philosophical thought of the Middle Ages inherited the Platonic ludological tradition. According to these notions, personal creativity of an individual (artistic, scientific etc.) was understood as being identical with cognition and perceived only as reproduction, retrieval of what had already been programmed by the Creator, that is, as a game and through the game. The brightest page of the Middle Ages is connected with chivalry and its comprehension because the phenomenon of chivalry is the top of medieval culture, its ethical and esthetical ideal, which was over-thought by its self-consciousness as a form of game. Distribution of roles covered all main manifestations of individual’s life. Therefore even usual outside manifestation of any personal emotions by an individual in his public life (happiness, satisfaction, anger, despair, sadness and so on) was subject to this “role dictate”. So, a sphere of public emotions display by an individual was also predetermined by imperativeness of his own social role he was playing. We can speak about consciousness of those times perceiving a poetic text as a played game and author art as predominantly performing art. Then constancy of plots and anonymity of works, which is a feature of medieval literature, becomes more understandable; as every author perceived it as a script and tried to play his role as best as possible; his role was written down as a corresponding text. Moreover, we should add that a similar game was predetermined also by some other peculiarities of medieval mentality. The reason is that medieval people tried to identify themselves with a certain sample which had already had a certain approbation, to achieve full self-expression and make this self-expression understandable for the society. A role was determined and a model of behavior was built according to the admitted interpretation of this sample and its allegoric meanings (most often, there were widely known Biblical images). These established forms of self-expression made processes of understanding and interpersonal dialogue easier.