JEUX is delighted to invite you to a unique and immersive creative writing workshop at TORCH Oxford and St Edmund Hall, Oxford, that explores the intersection of gameplay and literary creativity. JEUX is researching 17th-century games that were played in the literary salons and that novelists used as a catalyst for their creative writing.
We invite you, as creative writers, to help us investigate how exactly this works. We will play games from the book Les Jeux d’Esprit, for which Mademoiselle de la Force, a pioneering novelist, has designed her own games. The JEUX team has turned La Force’s descriptions into playable games. We would like you to step into a salon environment at these workshops, try out the games, and see how they might inspire or transform your own writing.
About the workshops:
Dates:
5 and 6 November 2024, Oxford TORCH and St Edmund Hall
Registration for this second workshop here
Participants have the opportunity to:
1. Play authentic 17th-century literary games
2. Draw on the support of experienced teachers in creative writing and novelists who will guide you through these games and offer a writing session
3. Learn how writers worked in earlier periods
4. Be part of a research project that aims to recover historical gameplay for today’s creative writers.
Some of the questions we will investigate together with you:
- Do these games still work?
- Can creative writers today get inspired by the wit and spirit of the seventeenth century?
- How do games, creativity and writing go together?
Who is the workshop for:
This workshop is designed for individuals with practice in creative writing, for example, through creative writing courses or through writing and presenting (literary) texts in different contexts. Your experience and insights will greatly enhance the depth of our exploration.
What does participation involve?
- Participation in a free creative-writing workshop, led by Marina Warner, together with Sophie Herxheimer, Clare Pollard, Matthew Reynolds, Philip Terry and Wes Williams.
- Playing literary games, including the “game of the novel”
- Writing you own creative text, inspired by the games, and reflecting on it together with researchers from the JEUX projects in a conversation
How to register?
If this opportunity resonates with you, please fill in our online registration form.
Don’t hesitate to get in touch with Damla Tahirbegi if you have any questions.
We look forward to playing the games and exploring new approaches to creativity with you. See you in Oxford!
