Food and literature: an overview

Abstract

Until relatively recently the subject of food has been somewhat neglected by literary scholars, many of whom considered it rather too ordinary an area for investigation; it is notable, for example, that the first serious monograph on Shakespeare and food appeared only in 2007 (Fitzpatrick, 2007). Yet literary critics have begun to notice that much of what they research and teach involves food and the rituals surrounding its consumption. Literary critics who write about food understand that the use of food in novels, plays, poems, and other works of literature can help explain the complex relationship between the body, subjectivity, and social structures regulating consumption. When authors refer to food they are usually telling the reader something important about narrative, plot, characterization, motives, and so on. Many critics interested in food in literature are alert to the historical specificity of references to food, and this is especially true of literature written before the last century: explaining obscure foodstuffs and attitudes toward feeding that a modern reader might not grasp is an important part of the critic’s job, and most literary critics have been influenced by food historians who have led the way in explicating esoteric foodstuffs and practices surrounding food. The literary canon is an important consideration here: critics writing about food in literature are conscious of ploughing new furrows and thus shaping what kinds of literary texts are worth exploring in terms of food. Food critics are making an important case for the serious study of food in respected literary texts: They are writing about food in nineteenth-century literature commonly studied in schools and universities, for example the work of Dickens (Hyman, 2009; Cozzi, 2010) and arguing for the centrality of food to phenomena hitherto thought beyond the remit of such analysis, for example the Romantic imagination (Morton, 2004; Gigante, 2005). Food critics are also drawing attention to literature currently at the edges of the canon, for example by exploring food and consumption in texts traditionally surveyed by historians: cookbooks, dietary literature, and soon, as well as literature by contemporary women writers (Sceats, 2000; Heller and Moran, 2003). They are thus making a strong statement about what deserves our attention and thus shaping future studies in this newly burgeoning area. The main aim of this chapter is to guide the reader toward some of the most important and original work done so far on literature and food, indicate the kinds of approaches critics tend to take, and consider which areas might well benefit from further exploration.