I. Nature and Significance of Play As A Cultural Phenomenon
“Play is older than culture, for culture, however inadequately defined, always presupposes human society, and animals have not waited for man to teach them their playing.”
Huizinga begins by making it clear that animals played first.
One of the most significant (human and cultural) aspects of play is that it is fun. This fun aspect is celebrated by Brian Sutton-Smith in his book The Ambiguity of Play:
“Prime credit in play-theory terms for denying the puritanical and work contentions about play in modern times must go to Huizinga who argues that play is a most fundamental human function and has permeated all cultures from the beginning.”
Read more about this topic: Homo Ludens (book)
Famous quotes containing the words nature, significance, play, cultural and/or phenomenon:
“I wish to say that, in so far as I can, I hope to promote the enactment of further legislation of this character.
There’s nothing else one can say about me—I’m superfluous, in a word. A supernumerary—that’s all. Nature evidently didn’t count on my appearance, and consequently treated me as an unexpected, uninvited guest.”
—Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev (1818–1883)
“History is the interpretation of the significance that the past has for us.”
—Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)
“But I shall hear without pain, that I play the courtier very ill, and talk of that which I do not well understand.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The sickly cultural pathos which the whole of France indulges in, that fetishism of the cultural heritage.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)
“When the ice is covered with snow, I do not suspect the wealth under my feet; that there is as good as a mine under me wherever I go. How many pickerel are poised on easy fin fathoms below the loaded wain! The revolution of the seasons must be a curious phenomenon to them. At length the sun and wind brush aside their curtain, and they see the heavens again.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)