Tropes of taste: The poetics of food and flavor in the Libro de Apolonio

Abstract

Food in the Libro de Apolonio is not simply a function of the plot but rather an aspect of the poet’s rhetorical and poetic technique. Four interrelated deployments of food in the poem (portrayals of bread, gendered uses of food, food practices related to health, and additional feasting scenes), when compared to the Latin source text, highlight the mester de clerecía poet’s skill in adaptation. Bread in the poem has sacramental overtones and brings the Apolonio into relation with other more explicitly religious works of mester de clerecía poetry. Food is not gendered in typically medieval ways in the Libro de Apolonio, as the poet does not connect women to food preparation or service, but rather to its sacramental and medicinal aspects. The poet uses food in relation to health throughout the poem, but perhaps most significant is the episode of Tarsiana’s proposed medicinal cure of her father Apolonio. Finally, the scenes of feasting that the poet inherits from the Latin are stark in terms of their portrayal of foods, but the feasts that the poet adds out of his own invention are the most descriptive segments involving sustenance. These four aspects, along with other food-related uses, such as the synesthetic employment of flavor throughout the poem and inserted anecdotes and moralizing digressions involving edible substances, create a vision of food in the poem that goes beyond plot and into the realm of poetic technique and characterization.