Chance in Early Modern Literature and Material Culture

We are delighted to be hosting two speakers discussing different aspects of chance in early modern literature and material culture.

Jessen Kelly (Utah): On Reckoning with Games of Chance in the Dutch Republic

Risk, probability, and future expectation have often traditionally been viewed in terms of histories of mathematics and quantification. This paper proceeds from the assertion that the history of art and material culture have an important but neglected role in the study of these concepts. Artifacts and images can, broadly speaking, stage varied temporalities for viewers; but they also obviously invoke matters of perception and mediation that are vital to assessing changing constructions of future time. Focusing on the early modern Dutch Republic, my paper examines the category of “breakables” in art and material culture. I concentrate in particular on breakable objects that reflected on their own status as such through their ludic qualities and references to games of chance. I juxtapose my analysis of these objects with a close consideration of Christiaan Huygens’s treatment of dice games in his On Reckoning in Games of Chance (1657), the first published, viable mathematical approach to expectation and a major work in the development of probability calculus. The dice problems in Huygens’s treatise had appeared repeatedly in early modern mathematical discourse. However, these problems can also be seen as part of a range of figurative uses of games of chance to formulate epistemologies of uncertain futures, uses which spanned different media. Comparing Huygens’s text with breakable material culture not only suggests the varied resonance of games of chance as models and analogies for future time; it also points to ways that material culture shaped methods for engaging future uncertainty in the United Provinces.


Tom Mortimer (Cambridge): To ‘Give and Hazard all’: Lotteries, Elections and the Search for Certainty in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice

In essence, the key question of my paper is this: how does the ‘risk’ or ‘uncertainty’ of a lottery lend itself to the stability of the state; how does ‘chance’ give rise to ‘certainty’? The 1590s in England were a time of immense social and constitutional uncertainty, driven by a reassertion of monarchical absolutism, a series of economic crises, and the lingering question of Elizabeth’s succession. In response, thinkers increasingly turned to the model republics of Athens and Venice for political inspiration: states which reduced corruption, partisanship and instability by distributing many of their public offices by lot. 

The ‘lottery-trial’ of Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice (c. 1594–7) has not been placed in this context before. In Shakespeare’s play, Portia’s lottery is a kind of ‘test’ designed by the Lord of Belmont, Portia’s father, to select an appropriate husband for his daughter by making each suitor guess which of three caskets contains her portrait. Scholars who have sought to examine the play’s republican leanings have generally overlooked the scenes, and even general criticism of the play has tended to argue that they rest ‘at the furthest remove from actual social practices’ (Richard A. Levin, 2010). 

Drawing from classical and early modern republicanism, my paper will argue that the play’s casket-trial in fact functions as a kind of election for the new ‘Lord of Belmont’. In particular, it will suggest that the blend of choice and chance displayed in Portia’s lottery, and its pervading interest in sovereignty and government, tie it closely to the electoral processes described by the Venetian nobleman Gasparo Contarini (1483-1542). Examining Shakespeare’s play alongside these ideas reveals that the ‘risks’ and ‘hazards’ intrinsic to lotteries, when applied in controlled circumstances, can give rise to confidence, stability and order. The uncertain, in other words, can assure certainty.

Please note that bookings for this seminar will close 24 hours in advance to allow the meeting link to be distributed.