What Maggie Knew: Game Theory, The Golden Bowl, and the Possibilities of Aesthetic Knowledge

This essay views The Golden Bowl through the lens of contemporary game theory—crucial to a number of social science fields, especially economics—arguing that James anticipates many of its crucial tenets through the strategising of his various characters, including most notably (and most successfully) Maggie Verver. But the novel also suggests the limitations of not only game theory, but of the means/ends logic of advanced capitalism that game theory unwittingly but brilliantly theorises.