Based on the proceedings of the international colloquium on 'Le reve et les sociétés humaines,' sponsored &amp; organized by the Near Eastern Center, University of California, Los Angeles &amp; held at the Cercie Culturel de Royaumont, Abbaye de Royaumont, Asulères-sur-Oise, 6/17-23/1962.

The Dream and Human Societies

Roger Caillois

Gustave Von Grunebaum

Univ. Of California Pr.

Play is "an occasion of pure waste: waste of time, energy, ingenuity, skill, and often of money." It is also an essential element of human social and spiritual development.In this study, Roger Caillois defines play as a voluntary activity that occurs in a pure space, isolated and protected from the rest of life. Within limits set by rules that provide a level playing field, players move toward an unpredictable outcome by responding to their opponents' actions. Caillois qualifies types of games and ways of playing, from the improvisation characteristic of children's play to the disciplined pursuit of solutions to gratuitously difficult puzzles. He also examines the means by which games become part of daily life, ultimately giving cultures their most characteristic customs and institutions.

Man, Play, and Games

Schocken Books Inc.

"This book is a fascinating meditation on the human imagination comtemplating the interior of stones."

The Writing of Stones

Politics & Social Sciences

Philosophy

University Press of Virginia

If you thought you knew all there is to know about Pontius Pilate and Jesus, this little book has some surprises for you. In this "greatest story never told," Pontius Pilate finally gets a chance to tell his side of the story, filling in what the Bible left out. For someone who made one of the most momentous decisions of all time, we know almost nothing about him. Who was this man who sentenced Jesus to death? What went through his mind as he weighed the alternatives? Was he a villain or a victim of circumstance? If we can imagine Pilate as our contemporary, what would we have done in his place?
Written by one of France's great men of letters of the twentieth century, Pontius Pilate is a highly provocative and psychologically gripping novel that reconstructs Pilate's state of mind in deciding to convict Jesus. Taking his place alongside the authors of other such "sacred fantasies" as Nikos Kazantzakis (The Last Temptation of Christ) and Dan Brown (The Da Vinci Code), the surrealist Roger Caillois conjures countless plausible dramas of the "what ifs" that might have played out inside Pilate's mind during the final twenty-four hours before he decided Jesus's fate. Transgressive, disconcerting, and original, Pontius Pilate provides a fascinating opportunity to contemplate the mind of a man who, with one decision, arguably changed the course of human history. It explores the interplay of politics and conscience, fundamentalism and cosmopolitanism, and fanaticism and pragmatism--themes even more compelling today than they were forty-some years ago when the book was originally published.
With an introduction by the religion scholar Ivan Strenski, this new American edition of Charles Lam Markmann's original English translation (published in 1963 and long since out of print) makes available once again for the English-language reading public a remarkable work of intelligence, wit, and imagination. Pontius Pilate offers an engaging and climactic read for anyone interested in the interplay of religion and culture and in the mysteries of this pinnacle moment in the biblical narrative.

Pontius Pilate (Studies in Religion and Culture)

Literature & Fiction

Genre Fiction

University of Virginia Press

A Little Guide to the Fifteenth Arrondissement for the Use of Phantoms

Readux Books

人与神圣

罗杰·卡约瓦

生活·读书·新知三联书店

Games and People (Chinese Edition)

Beijing United Publishing co., LTD

Il mito e l'uomo

Bollati Boringhieri editore

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Books by Roger Caillois