{"id":23281,"date":"2020-12-08T02:25:18","date_gmt":"2020-12-08T02:25:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=23281"},"modified":"2020-12-09T13:47:17","modified_gmt":"2020-12-09T13:47:17","slug":"in-the-queens-gambit-and-beyond-chess-holds-up-a-mirror-to-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/in-the-queens-gambit-and-beyond-chess-holds-up-a-mirror-to-life\/","title":{"rendered":"In ‘The Queen’s Gambit’ and beyond, chess holds up a mirror to life"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jenny Adams<\/a>, University of Massachusetts Amherst<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

In the closing sequence of \u201cThe Queen\u2019s Gambit<\/a>,\u201d the chess-playing heroine, Beth Harmon, defeats her archrival Vasily Borgov at the Moscow Invitational. The next day she impulsively skips her flight home to join a group of adoring chess players in what appears to be Moscow\u2019s famous Sokolniki Park<\/a>. The symbolism of this moment is clear. Dressed in a blazing white coat and hat<\/a>, Beth has become a chess queen with the power to move freely through a field of men.<\/p>\n

If this use of chess to represent life feels familiar, it is largely thanks to the medieval world. As I argue in my book \u201cPower Play: The Literature and Politics of Chess in the Late Middle Ages<\/a>,\u201d the game\u2019s early European players turned the game into an allegory for society and changed it to mirror their world. Since then, poets and writers have used it as an allegory for love, duty, conflict and accomplishment.<\/p>\n

The game\u2019s medieval roots<\/h2>\n

When chess arrived in Europe through Mediterranean trade routes of the 10th century, players altered the game to reflect their society\u2019s political structure.<\/p>\n

In its original form, chess was a game of war<\/a> with pieces representing different military units: horsemen, elephant-riding fighters, charioteers and infantry. These armed units protected the \u201cshah,\u201d or king, and his counselor, the \u201cfirz,\u201d in the game\u2019s imagined battle.<\/p>\n

But Europeans quickly transformed the \u201cshah\u201d to a king, the \u201cvizier\u201d to the queen, the \u201celephants\u201d to bishops, the \u201chorses\u201d to knights, the \u201cchariots\u201d to castles and the \u201cfoot soldiers\u201d to pawns. With these changes, the two sides of the board no longer represented the units in an army; they now stood in for Western social order.<\/p>\n

The game gave concrete expression to the medieval worldview that every person had a designated place. Moreover, it revised and improved the very common \u201cthree-estate\u201d model<\/a>: those who fought (knights), those who prayed (clergy) and those who worked (the rest).<\/p>\n

Then there was the transformation of the queen. Although chess rules across medieval Europe had some variations, most initially granted the queen the power to move only one square. This changed in the 15th century, when the chess queen gained unlimited movement in any direction.<\/p>\n

Most players would agree that this change made the game faster and more interesting to play. But also, and as the late Stanford historian Marylin Yalom argued in \u201cThe Birth of the Chess Queen<\/a>,\u201d the queen\u2019s elevation to the strongest piece appeared first in Spain during the time when the powerful Queen Isabella held the throne.<\/p>\n

A \u2018mating\u2019 dance<\/h2>\n

With a powerful female figure<\/a> now on the board, jokes about \u201cmating\u201d abounded, and poets often used chess as a metaphor for sex.<\/p>\n

Take the 13th-century epic poem \u201cHuon de Bordeaux<\/a>.\u201d Wanting to expose his newly hired servant, Huon, as a nobleman, King Yvoryn urges him to play chess against his prodigiously talented daughter.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf thou can mate her,\u201d Yvoryn says, \u201cI promise that thou shalt have her one night in thy bed, to do with her at thy pleasure.\u201d If Huon loses, Yvoryn will kill him.<\/p>\n

Huon does not play chess well. But this turns out not to matter because he looks like a medieval version of \u201cQueen\u2019s Gambit\u201d breakout star Jacob Fortune-Lloyd<\/a>. Dizzy with desire and desperate to sleep with this heartthrob, Yvoryn\u2019s daughter plays badly and loses the game.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>
An image of two young lovers playing chess from Alfonso X\u2019s 13th-century \u2018Book of Chess, Dice and Tables.\u2019<\/span>
\nCharles Knutson<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In the 14th-century poem \u201cThe Avowyng of King Arthur<\/a>,\u201d chess also stands in for sex. At one key moment, King Arthur summons a noble lady to play chess; together they \u201csat themselves together on the side of the bed\u201d and \u201cbegan to play until dawn that was day.\u201d The repeated \u201cmating\u201d on the board not-so-subtly hints at a night of lovemaking.<\/p>\n

It also shows up to this end in \u201cThe Queen\u2019s Gambit.\u201d In an echo of Huon\u2019s game, Beth plays with her friend and love interest, Townes, in his hotel room. Their match, however, is interrupted when it becomes clear that Townes doesn\u2019t share Beth\u2019s feelings. Later in the story, Beth plays with Harry Beltik. Their first kiss takes place over the board and prefaces their sexual consummation.<\/p>\n

Chess as \u2018life in miniature\u2019<\/h2>\n

But much deeper and more interesting are the medieval allegories that use chess to reinforce societal obligations and ties between citizens.<\/p>\n

No author did this more comprehensively than 13th-century Dominican friar Jacobus de Cessolis. In his treatise \u201cThe Book of the Morals of Men and the Duties of Nobles and Commoners on the Game of Chess<\/a>,\u201d Jacobus imagines chess as a way to teach personal accountability.<\/p>\n

In four short sections, Jacobus moves through the gameplay and pieces, describing the ways each one contributes to a harmonious social order. He goes so far as to distinguish pawns by trade and to connect each to its \u201croyal\u201d partner. The first pawn is a farmer who is tied to the castle because he provides food to the kingdom. The second pawn is a blacksmith, who makes armor for the knight. The third is an attorney, who helps the bishop with legal matters. And so on.<\/p>\n

Jacobus\u2019 work became one of the most popular of the Middle Ages and, according to chess historian H.J.R. Murray<\/a>, at one point rivaled the number of Bible copies in circulation. Even though Jacobus in his prologue implies that his book is most useful for a king, the rest of his treatise makes clear that all people \u2013 and the piece they most closely resemble \u2013 can benefit by reading his work, learning the game and mastering the lessons that come with it.<\/p>\n

Jacobus\u2019 allegory becomes one of the central messages of \u201cThe Queen\u2019s Gambit.\u201d Beth reaches her full potential only after she learns to collaborate with other players. Just like the pawn she converts in her final game<\/a>, Beth becomes a figurative queen only with the help of others.<\/p>\n

[Get the best of The Conversation, every weekend.<\/em> Sign up for our weekly newsletter<\/a>.]<\/p>\n

But this is not the only modern work that deploys chess in this fashion. \u201cStar Wars<\/a>,\u201d \u201cHarry Potter and the Sorcerer\u2019s Stone<\/a>\u201d and \u201cBlade Runner<\/a>,\u201d to name just a few, use versions of the game at key moments to show a character\u2019s growth or to stand in as a metaphor for conflict.<\/p>\n

So the next time you see a headline like \u201cTrump Nears Checkmate<\/a>\u201d and \u201cGang of 10: Obama\u2019s Checkmate<\/a>,\u201d or see an ad for a \u201cCheckmate\u201d infidelity test<\/a>, you can thank \u2013 or curse \u2013 the medieval world.<\/p>\n

Grandmaster Garry Kasparov\u2019s observation ultimately holds true. \u201cChess,\u201d he once quipped<\/a>, \u201cis life in miniature.\u201d\"The<\/p>\n

Jenny Adams<\/a>, Associate Professor of English, University of Massachusetts Amherst<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jenny Adams, University of Massachusetts Amherst In the closing sequence of \u201cThe Queen\u2019s Gambit,\u201d the chess-playing heroine, Beth Harmon, defeats her archrival Vasily Borgov at the Moscow Invitational. The next day she impulsively skips her flight home to join a group of adoring chess players in what appears to be Moscow\u2019s famous Sokolniki Park. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":23282,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[293],"tags":[1114,365,2694,3884,652,162,9110,536],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23281"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23281"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23281\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23289,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23281\/revisions\/23289"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}