About Roger Caillois
Roger Caillois (French: [ʁɔʒe kajwa]; 3 March 1913 – 21 December 1978) was a French intellectual and prolific writer whose original work brought together literary criticism, sociology, poetry, ludology and philosophy by focusing on very diverse subjects such as games, surrealism, south-American literature, the mineral world, dreams and images, ethnology, the history of religions and the sacred. He was also instrumental in introducing Latin American authors such as Jorge Luis Borges, Pablo Neruda and Miguel Ángel Asturias to the French public. After his death, the French Literary award Prix Roger Caillois was named after him in 1991. With Georges Bataille he founded the College of Sociology, a group of intellectuals who lectured regularly to one another. Caillois also described a dualistic polarity within which the four categories of games can be variously located: Paidia or uncontrolled fantasy, spontaneous play through improvisation, the rules of which are created during playing time. Caillois' efforts paid off: he graduated as a normalien in 1933 before entering the École Pratique des Hautes Études, where he came into contact with such eminent linguists as Georges Dumézil and Alexandre Kojève.
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