Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Review of "The Legend of Zelda and Theology" ed. Jonathan L. Walls (Gray Matter Books, Kindle edition, 2011) Jason Anthony

2013; Brill; Volume: 2; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1163/21659214-90000037

2588-8099

Digital Games and Media

Games do unexpected things.One of those things, as it turns out, is building a bridge to an experience of divinity.Games have evolved from religious ritual (as with, say, collegiate lacrosse), been adopted into ritual (as with, say, dreidel), or simply kept company long enough with religious traditions that it's hard to discern a sacred or mundane provenance.Once you have an eye for them, holy games begin to pop up everywhere.For some traditions, they're indeed hard to miss.The ancient Greeks offer an exuberant case study.Wagers and contests cast long shadows in the gods' histories, and games played an outsized role in ritual life.A citizen of the fifth century B.C.E.might watch the beauty contests in the temple of Aphrodite; Euripides and Socrates fighting for prizes at the festival of Dionysus; carding and craft contests in the name of Athena; funeral games to honour prominent politicians; and, of course, the Olympic and other Panhellenic games, the high mark of a sacramental calendar of games.For the polytheistic and democratic Greeks, perhaps such contests reflected