In February and March, JEUX will explore in detail how the salonnières played with literary traditions. PI Karin Kukkonen is visiting Koen de Temmerman at the University of Ghent and will present a series of talks on literary games and ancient literature.
19 February 2026 «Playing the Classics: Literary Practice, Creativity and Mimesis in the Early-Modern Period”
Keynote at Workshop Like / Unlike Life at Groningen University (NL)
Taking early-modern games with the classics as her starting point, Kukkonen discusses how art folds into life, as models provided by the ancient texts feed into Early-Modern practices, and how life folds into art, as these practices then lead to new experiments in writing on the cusp of the modern novel.
26 February 2026 «Riddles, Dreams and Banquets: Reimagining Literary History through Games.“
Lecture at Ghent University (BE), hosted by Novel Echoes research group
Early-modern writers developed an account of literary history from antiquity to the early-modern period by reimagining ancient sources in game settings. In this lecture, Kukkonen discusses in particular the work of Madeleine de Scudéry and how she devises a history for the novel through gameplay format.
09 March 2026 "Les jeux littéraires au XVIIe siècle: Translatio d'une pratique"
Lecture at Strasbourg University (FR), hosted by Comparative Literature Department
Literary games were played in the Italian academies and courts, and found their way into the salons of Paris in the seventeenth century. We will see how these practices were translated into a new cultural context, how their rules and players change, and how they move from social settings into the world of the novel through examples from Scudéry, Sorel and La Force.