Editors
D. Schwartz (Ed.)
Document Type
Occasional Paper
Publication Date
6-2013
Publication Title
Center for Gaming Research Occasional Paper Series: Paper 22
Publisher Location
Las Vegas, Nevada
First page number:
1
Last page number:
12
Abstract
Charles Cotton’s Compleat Gamester, one of the best known manuals accompanying a virtual pandemic of gambling fever across early modern Europe, likens gaming to shipwreck since there are “but few Casts at Dice betwixt a rich man and a beggar,” “but few inches between [living] and drowning.” This conjunction of shipwreck and gaming recurs in early modern literature and constitutes a rhetorical topos in the sense of philosopher Hans Blumenberg. I examine several instances of this conjunction (e.g. in Cardano’s autobiography, Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Spinoza’s Theological-Political Treatise, and Joseph de la Vega’s Confusion de Confusiones) and suggest that the conjunction can be understood according to Ian Hacking’s thesis on the contemporaneous development of probability theory.
Keywords
probability; speculation; risk; rhetoric; early modern period
Disciplines
Gaming and Casino Operations Management | Hospitality Administration and Management | Tourism and Travel
File Format
Language
English
Repository Citation
Hart, D. J.
(2013).
Shipwreck with Speculator Early Modern Representations of Risk and Gambling. In D. Schwartz (Ed.),
Center for Gaming Research Occasional Paper Series: Paper 22
1-12.
Available at:
https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/occ_papers/32