The Libros de Acedrex is available online!
May. 2nd, 2008 10:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jducoeurOkay, time for a little Laurel-geeking. My thanks to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mikekn for pointing out that not only has Sonja Musser Golladay's long-awaited dissertation on "Los libros de acedrex dados e tablas" been published, but it's available for download from the University of Arizona! It's pretty big even by dissertation standards (over 1400 pages), but well worth getting your hands on -- this is without a doubt the most important book published on period games since Willughby's "Volume of Playes".
Golladay goes into loving detail about every aspect of the book and topic, and the result is that it's potentially interesting to many different readers. For example,baron_steffan might want to take a look at the ten pages discussing Hermeticism as an underlying precept of parts of the book; quantumkitty might enjoy poring through the full transcription of the text. Anyone who enjoys chess and wants to hone their period-chess skills is likely to appreciate the 100+ chess problems from the book, and anyone who enjoy fun and weird period games will *love* the stuff in here -- the majority of these games are still unknown to most of the SCA.
I'll admit a modest personal stake here: she spends several pages on my reconstruction of the Astrological Tables, and broadly finds it to not suck. (Which is a relief: it's always a bit disconcerting to have a knowledgeable scholar pore over my stuff.) But really: with this publication, all of the books that I had in my "long-awaited" pile have finally been published. (This, Willughby, and Smith's compilation of the Domenico corpus.) Clearly, I need to set my sights on something new to wait for now...
mikekn for pointing out that not only has Sonja Musser Golladay's long-awaited dissertation on "Los libros de acedrex dados e tablas" been published, but it's available for download from the University of Arizona! It's pretty big even by dissertation standards (over 1400 pages), but well worth getting your hands on -- this is without a doubt the most important book published on period games since Willughby's "Volume of Playes".Golladay goes into loving detail about every aspect of the book and topic, and the result is that it's potentially interesting to many different readers. For example,
baron_steffan might want to take a look at the ten pages discussing Hermeticism as an underlying precept of parts of the book; quantumkitty might enjoy poring through the full transcription of the text. Anyone who enjoys chess and wants to hone their period-chess skills is likely to appreciate the 100+ chess problems from the book, and anyone who enjoy fun and weird period games will *love* the stuff in here -- the majority of these games are still unknown to most of the SCA.I'll admit a modest personal stake here: she spends several pages on my reconstruction of the Astrological Tables, and broadly finds it to not suck. (Which is a relief: it's always a bit disconcerting to have a knowledgeable scholar pore over my stuff.) But really: with this publication, all of the books that I had in my "long-awaited" pile have finally been published. (This, Willughby, and Smith's compilation of the Domenico corpus.) Clearly, I need to set my sights on something new to wait for now...