Reading as a game

Abstract

This article proposes to think of literary reading as a game based on a fundamental premise such as the consideration of literature as an activity, a practice. It begins by investigating the similarities between playing and reading, not only in terms of everyday experience but especially in relation to those that have been investigated by the most prominent specialists on playing. Evidence emerges from this survey that, just as literary critics who are interested in reading generally ignore the game in their research, game specialists from all disciplines, for their part, purely and simply neglect the reading. This work then deals with investigating to what extent playing allows characterizing the specificity of literary reading, based on two associated central aspects, collected in the notions of playing and game, and describing the singular oscillation that occurs between the two.