A History of Food in Literature: From the Fourteenth Century to the Present

by Charlotte Boyce, Joan Fitzpatrick

When novels, plays and poems refer to food, they are often doing much more than we might think. Recent critical thinking suggests that depictions of food in literary works can help to explain the complex relationship between the body, subjectivity and social structures. A History of Food in Literature provides a clear and comprehensive overview of significant episodes of food and its consumption in major canonical literary works from the medieval period to the twenty-first century. This volume contextualises these works with reference to pertinent historical and cultural materials such as cookery books, diaries and guides to good health, in order to engage with the critical debate on food and literature and how ideas of food have developed over the centuries. Organised chronologically and examining certain key writers from every period, including Chaucer, Shakespeare, Austen and Dickens, this book's enlightening critical analysis makes it relevant for anyone interested in the study of food and literature.

314 pages, Hardcover

First published May 8, 2016

About the author

My research centres on nineteenth-century literature and culture, and Victorian representations of food, dining, hunger and fasting, in particular. I have written articles on the relationship between Victorian cookery books and fiction, representations of hunger and famine in the 1840s and the politics of feast and fast in Tennyson’s Idylls of the King. My next projects in this area will be a monograph on Victorian Hunger, which will trace the shifting meanings of and responses to ‘hunger’ in a variety of Victorian literary and cultural texts, and a cultural history of The Victorian Dining-Room.

I am also interested in Victorian constructions of celebrity and, together with Drs Páraic Finnerty and Ann-Marie Millim, have co-written a book on Victorian Celebrity and Tennyson’s Circle (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). This book emerges out of the HEIF-funded project ‘Tennyson's Celebrity Circle: Cultural Interactions on the Isle of Wight’, which I co-directed with Dr Finnerty. For further information, visit http://tennysonscelebritycircle.port.....

Together with Dr Joan Fitzpatrick (Loughborough University), I am currently writing A History of Food in Literature (forthcoming, Routledge), a comprehensive critical overview of representations of food and consumption in literary and cultural texts from the medieval period to the twenty-first century.

Reviews

[Maria]

Disappointing. A catalogue more than an argument I was looking for. But a good collection of facts if you are working in relevant area.

[Brigitta Quantock]

For an academic text it was pretty good, though I think some of the passages were a little densely written. Overall very interesting but probably won't read it again.