Greek Symposium Research Articles

Sirenaicks, Guilds and a New Coryate Manuscript

Abstract While Thomas Coryate (1577–1617) is most often remembered as an eccentric and pioneering travel writer, his other claim to fame is his participation in a group called ‘right Worshipful Fraternitie of Sireniacal Gentlemen’. Often conflated with the ‘Mermaid Club’, this group met monthly at the Mermaid Tavern to eat, drink and trade jesting verses. Coryate’s role in the group was often that of the comic butt, a position that had classical antecedents in the buffoonish roles of the parasite at Greek symposia and the scurra at Roman convivia. However, a previously overlooked manuscript suggests that Coryate had a closer relationship to at least one of the other Sireniacal Gentlemen, John Hoskins, than simply being his club’s object of ridicule. This new evidence prompts a re-examination of the primary sources related to the ‘Sirenaicks’ (as Coryate called them) as well as the scholarship scrutinizing that group. This essay argues that the Sirenaicks organised themselves as a mock-guild and it begins to develop an understanding of how that social structure affected the group’s mode of literary production.

The World Underfoot: Mosaics and Metaphor in the Greek Symposium by Hallie M. Franks

Reviewed by: The World Underfoot: Mosaics and Metaphor in the Greek Symposium by Hallie M. Franks Sean Corner Hallie M. Franks. The World Underfoot: Mosaics and Metaphor in the Greek Symposium. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. Pp. xii, 220. $85.00. ISBN 978-0-19-086316-6. One might say that this book aims to do for the mosaics of the andron (the "men's quarters" in which guests were received and drinking parties held) what F. Lissarrague's The Aesthetics of the Greek Banquet: Images of Wine and Ritual (Princeton 1990) did for vase painting. The mosaics are perhaps especially liable to be treated as merely decorative, with no meaning beyond (occasionally) a cursory reference to the room's function: vines for the andron like fish-themed bathroom decor today. Franks seeks to show us that the metaphors at play are much richer than this. Placing the imagery in the context of the lived experience of the symposium, she offers a reading of it as ripe with meaning. The study treats pebble mosaics of the "long fourth century." Most are found in private homes, the overwhelming majority in association with the andron. As Franks acknowledges, the andron mosaics that we have are "surprisingly varied" (often unique) and their subjects often not obviously "sympotic." Thus, she has elected to "concentrate in particular on mosaics that respond to patterns of sympotic activity," on that basis elucidating how some of these images are, in fact, related to the symposium. In contrast to vase painting, not much attention has been paid to the meaning, in context, of these mosaics. Scholars have argued that they may be understood as Dionysiac, or as Orientalizing, or as evocative of masculine ideals. These claims, Franks contends, are either problematic or stand to be considerably complicated and expanded upon. After a methodological introduction and a first chapter introducing the mosaics and the symposium, chapter 2 treats a set of mosaics that may be read as figuring the symposium as a sea voyage, whether as focused on the condition of being out at sea or on the journey to exotic and fantastical places. In chapter 3, she turns to mosaics related to the journeying or wandering Dionysos or hero, and in chapter 4 to mosaics featuring the wheel. Finally, chapter 5 treats mosaics [End Page 366] whose imagery Franks relates to symposia of an imagined, primitive past. She reads the mosaics in relation to scholarly treatments of related vase painting and literature and considers how the mosaic interacts with other aspects of the banqueters' experience to give it a meaningful shape and content. These mosaics, she argues, do not merely exist as a decorative backdrop but actively participate in the construction of conviviality as a shared experience of symbolic circularity or metaphorical journey to remote times or places, generating feelings of fraternity, unity, and equity, and channelling potentially harmful competition, thus strengthening bonds among citizens. Franks' emphasis on understanding the social function of the symposium in terms of intimately felt, lived experience is welcome. I have myself argued that, rather than an "anti-city," the symposium provided a sentimental education in citizenship in the context of a set of ethical and social protocols that responded to tensions endemic in the microcosm of the banquet and macrocosm of the city ("Symposium," in J. Wilkins and R. Nadeau [eds.], A Companion to Food in Antiquity [Oxford: Wiley Blackwell 2015], 234-242). Franks adopts a judicious and nuanced approach to debates about the symposium, and the originality of her contribution lies not in her view of the institution's social function, but in her reconstruction of the meaning of the mosaics as they contributed to the shaping of the symposiasts' experience. The result is a short but rich and stimulating study. I was not convinced that the apparatus Franks constructs out of the work of a selection of theorists contributed much. It is not merely that the ideas are presented in gratuitously obscure language, but that those ideas, even when they are intelligible, are of dubious coherence and do little analytic or explanatory work, serving only as rhetorical dressing. This detracts little from the book, however, since, tellingly, Franks makes little...

‘The Delightful Logic of Intoxication’: Fictionalising Alcoholism

Alcohol invariably connotes different, often conflicting, feelings. As Iain Gately rightly observes in Drink: A Cultural History of Alcohol (2009), it “has been credited with the powers of inspiration and destruction” (1). This reflection is as relevant to classical antiquity, when wine was savoured during the Greek symposia, as to the modern world, in which alcohologists study the devastating effects of alcohol abuse. However, much as sociological, psychological, and medical research into alcoholism provide statistics, problem-analysis, and therapeutic approaches, literature offers representations of alcoholism which allow for a more profound insight into alcohol dependence and its many implications. This article focuses on how alcoholism is dissected and contextualised in literature, predominantly in contemporary English fiction.

The λεπάς in Alcaeus

In the Alcaeus fragment 359 Voigt, the philological problems are linked not only with an unclear textual tra dition, but also with the interesting and unexpected association between the λεπάς (a type of shellfish) and the tortoise (χέλυς): this ambiguous linkage is created by the poet to arouse an emphatic effect in his audience. The historical and philological elements provided by Athenaeus in his quotation of the poem lead most scholars to accept the textual conclusions of Wilamowitz (χέλυς instead of λεπάς). Nevertheless, the exegetical reading proposed by the German philologist (i.e. a riddle) can be put in doubt and replaced by a new interpretation based on the analysis of the context in which the poem is cited (a gastronomic passage of the Deipnosophists) and on that of the original performance (the banquet of Alcaeus and his ἑταιρεία). In light of this analysis, the little more than two Alcaic verses can be interpreted as a metaphorical apostrophe. In fact, Alcaeus seems to address the shellfish λεπάς and nickname it χέλυς, arousing a highly ironic effect among the συµπόται. This figure of speech is based on the capacity of both the λεπάς and χέλυς to be used to make sounds, even though the differences between these two elements of the symposium make the association paradoxical. A series of several fish-plates provided at the end of the article draws attention to the presence of shellfish—which seems to be less evident than the presence of the χέλυς—at the ancient Greek symposia.

Associating the Aulêtris : Flute Girls and Prostitutes in the Classical Greek Symposium

Associating the Aulêtris:Flute Girls and Prostitutes in the Classical Greek Symposium Max L. Goldman (bio) Introduction Symposiasts in the late archaic Greek period began hiring trained female slaves to furnish musical entertainment.1 The profession grew so pervasive that the female aulos player, the aulêtris, came to seem as necessary to a proper party as wreaths and wine. While shopping for party supplies, for example, Theophrastus’s repulsive man hires some pipers. What is so repulsive? He shows off his supplies, makes indiscriminate invitations, and boasts at the barber’s and perfumer’s shops that he will get drunk.2 And how do the pipers fit? James Diggle (2004, 318–9) suggests that Mr. Repulsive, in addition to being a braggart, also offends when he insinuates that his guests can have sex with the women. Although I am not convinced that the neuter tauta includes the pipers with the other supplies, as Diggle infers, in any case the only sexual insinuation in the text would have to stem from the nature of the pipers themselves. Mr. Repulsive does not mention sex, but drunkenness. The question becomes, Must the female piper imply venal sex? Recent scholarship has indeed emphasized the female piper’s sexual labor, even taking the word aulêtris as a synonym for prostitute.3 James Davidson (1997, 81) has influentially highlighted the sexual role of the female piper, one that not only has her regularly provide sex for the guests at the end of the symposium, but also imagines her soliciting men on the street. Many scholars follow Davidson to a greater or lesser degree.4 Matthew Dillon (2002, 183), for example, presumes that female pipers ended their performances by having sex with the guests. Warren Anderson (1994, 143) follows a similar assumption and unaccountably undresses them: “Auletrides, scantily clad young women, were paid to provide all-male gatherings of symposiasts with aulos music and fellation.” Marina Fischer (2013, 222) claims that entertainers provided “not only musical and acrobatic entertainment during banquets but also [End Page 29] engaged in sexual activities with the symposiasts (D. 59.33; Is. 3.13–17).” Fischer’s claim is particularly difficult to evaluate because neither passage cited mentions entertainers. Other scholars have underplayed the element of prostitution. Kenneth Dover (1968, 220) says that “it would be unfair to say” that slaves hired to entertain at the symposium “were necessarily prostitutes, although they could be prostituted.” Chester Starr (1978, 409) believes that the evidence does not allow us to imagine that the symposium with female entertainers “always, or even usually” resulted in orgies. Given the servile status of the aulêtris and her frequent presence among groups of carousing men, she was likely at times subject to prostitution. I have found no certain evidence, however, that she ever engaged in venal sex within the symposium and evidence for prostitution is slim and vague. What the evidence, written and visual, does reveal is that the female piper in classical Athens had a far more complex and nuanced set of associations than venal sex, and this raises important methodological questions for how we talk about slave women in classical Athens, the role of prostitution in our reconstructions, and the nature of the symposium. We encounter female pipers at the center of intersecting Athenian discourses on sexuality, luxury, music, and gender. These discourses form the subject of the sections in this article. First, I briefly recount some evidence for female pipers outside of the symposium. I then treat evidence where she stands in synecdoche for the party itself, where she serves as an instrument of moral condemnation and where men eroticize her. Next, I examine her activities within the party, including evidence for how the prostitution may have worked. This examination raises questions about the life of the female piper. I limit my focus to the female performer in classical Athens, for as the postclassical period progressed, the status and role of performers appear to have changed sufficiently to require a separate treatment.5 It is impossible, however, to draw a sharp terminus for the classical period. In addition, a significant amount of evidence reaches us filtered through much later sources. The evidence...

A Walk Past Eve and Adam’s: The 2014 Zurich James Joyce Foundation Workshop, Zurich, Switzerland, 3–9 August 2014

A Walk Past Eve and Adam’s:The 2014 Zurich James Joyce Foundation Workshop, Zurich, Switzerland, 3–9 August 2014 Sameera Siddiqe The activity of walking is a significant way by which we take ourselves from one place to another. It also happens to be the primary mode of our arrival at the Zurich James Joyce Foundation, where a group of Joyce enthusiasts convened last year as is annually done—this time on the subject of ambulation. The creaky wooden floor-boards announced our presence in Strauhof, and we enjoyed reunions with colleagues, brownies, plum cake, and tea. “Sit down and take a walk” (U 3.79) In spite of the workshop title—“Walking”—we sat down in the room adjacent to the library. This would be in opposition to classical teachings, for, when challenged by an arrogant philosophy student saying that there is no such thing as motion, Diogenes of Sinope stood up and walked away. The Zurich participants sat around the room, each in view of the others, resembling the style of an ancient Greek symposium. Offerings for the week began with Fritz Senn’s “Variants of Walking,” which led us through an interactive word-map of the synonyms that extend from the adjective “walking” and the verb “walk.” A red folder circulated around the Foundation, filled front to back with instances of walking in Joyce’s works. Having laboriously trudged through the texts himself, Senn set the peripatetic stage for a debate that was to unfold that week. “Whom were you trying to walk like?” (U 3.184) The act of walking does not permit having both feet off the ground at the same time: that is an impossible feat, given the cosmic imbalance and our dependence on gravity. As such, we tend to use different modes of being to represent walking, and Ian Gunn proved exactly that. While walking through a new Dublin with an old Dublin map in hand, he recalled that one would have to “walk over buildings” and through houses to reach designated spots in Ulysses. It is no wonder then that we also spring, jump, fly, and dive through the text with its continually superimposed borders and lines. What is more compelling is the fact that it takes a common walker, not a reader, more than two hours to complete the alleged route that Stephen Dedalus takes to get to Sandymount, notwithstanding his traverse into eternity. The Workshop is meant to be an active agora of discussion and learning. Where many academic conferences and symposiums fail [End Page 602] to bring participants together, this one always fulfills such a goal. Almost all aspects of the theme are mutually explored as participants amble into the nooks and crannies of the oeuvre. Though there is no expectation of dramatic academic breakthroughs, there is always room for an open discussion after every presentation. This serves as good training for beginning Joyceans, as well as veteran readers, to learn from each other. For instance, one of the debates at this Workshop raised the question of how exactly the throwaway might have floated on the Liffey and how the weather on that fateful Dublin day influenced its movement; Gunn believed that the depiction of the movement of the throwaway cannot be trusted because it may not, after all, have been the same one given to Bloom. “He left me on my ownio” (U 6.375) Having solemnly strolled through the fictional “Hades” themselves, Sabrina Alonso and Bill Brockman gave us new ways to imagine how we as readers might pass through the underworld. A pictogram revealed how, where, and in which direction the occupants of the funeral carriage were oriented. The city passed them by as if in stop-motion, while the carriage seemed to stand still. Such pivotal revelations shed light not only on the episode but also on the creative freedom of the Zurich Workshops. One is often surprised by the variety and richness of chosen topics. In fact, the themes are often anything but limiting, as demonstrated by the ongoing success of the 2013 Newspapers Workshop. “Where did I? … Where?” (U 8.1189) The question of destination is one quite pertinent to walking. Whether...

КОГНИТИВНЫЕ РАМКИ ВОСПРИЯТИЯ ДРЕВНЕГРЕЧЕСКОЙ ВАЗОПИСИ ВРЕМЕН АРХАИКИ И КЛАССИКИ: ОСОБЕННОСТИ КУЛЬТУРНОГО КОДИРОВАНИЯ

Author examines a set of culture codes peculiar to Ancient Greek symposium as a whole defining the ways and means of symposiasts’ acquiring the specific cognitive dispositions pattern.

An example of ‘hyperbolic decoding’. Reframing the narrative of a greek symposium scene in the Erica Jong’s novel Sappho’s Leap

The study is about the only greek symposium scene in the Erica Jong’s novel Sappho’s Leap. We intend to explore the relationship between linguistic rendering of greek fragments by the author and the original texts. We compare, through a linguistic-philological method, the ancient greek text and the novel through a semantic analysis intratextual and intertextual. The study identifies three main directions of decoding activated by Jong: linguistic reductions and / or additions in greek fragments; historical and biographical inventions about the characters, that ‘mistify’ the cultural period; adaptation of the story to the information of the fragments through an inferential reading. The article ‘discovers’ a new form of decoding from a literary text to a literary text, that I have called 'hyperbolic', a neologism that highlights the complexity of an infrequent and synchronous switching from ancient to modern, from one literary genre to another. We highlight contaminations and pastiche of a process not just “politically correct”, although demonstrating the relevance of the themes of ancient greek literature.

КОГНИТИВНЫЕ РАМКИ ВОСПРИЯТИЯ ДРЕВНЕГРЕЧЕСКОЙ ВАЗОПИСИ ВРЕМЕН АРХАИКИ И КЛАССИКИ: ПРОСТРАНСТВЕННЫЕ И КОНТЕКСТУАЛЬНЫЕ АСПЕКТЫ

Author examines the space of Ancient Greek symposium, as including in itself the projective realities of the sympotic vase-painting, from the point of view of cognitive patterns underlying it.

The Architriklinos at Cana

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.) Translators have chosen a variety of terms to render the Greek determinative compound ... from the second chapter of the Gospel of John (2:8 and 9). The term is a title of some sort applied to an individual with a prominent role in the celebratory that accompanies the famous wedding at Cana. The NRSV translates it as chief steward. Obery M. Hendricks, Jr., the principal annotator for the Gospel in the New Oxford Annotated Bible, glossed the word with headwaiter or of ceremonies. These are two incompatible choices, but, in offering them, Hendricks adheres to the general editorial policy of inclusivity of interpretive strategies.1 Leon Morris chose master of the banquet in his commentary, as did Andrew T. Lincoln for his.2 Craig R. Koester, in his study of symbolism in John, renders the term as steward of the feast.3 Martin Hengel, with the assistance of Gerhard Schmidt in translation from the German, abjured euphemism and settled on head slave.4 Jean-Bosco Matand Bulembat, drawing a contrast between the helpful service of the mother of Jesus at the wedding and the incompetence of the architriklinos, used head-waiter; Raymond E. Brown chose the same term in his major work on John.5 J. Duncan M. Derrett viewed the position as more elevated in status and rendered the term as master of ceremonies.6 The variation in translation would seem to relate to a debate about the status of the individual involved: is the architriklinos an invited guest with a special role in the ceremony, or is he a slave serving in the dining room, albeit one with an elevated position in the household? The primary objective of this project is, however, to provide a third alternative that nullifies that choice, although the resolution will not, regrettably, provide much help to translators. By reviewing the few extant occurrences of architriklinos as well as those of the inverse compound trikliniarches (...), I demonstrate that the term would best apply to an individual who is both a slave or freed slave and an honored guest. Such a confluence of social categories is so distant from the twenty-first century that no word in modern English will capture the incongruity. In reviewing the examples of both words, I apply the larger social context of dining in the first-century Mediterranean world as an interpretive tool to establish the role of the architriklinos. The latter task has been made much easier by the significant work recently done in comparing dining practices in the NT with those of Greek and Roman cultures.7 In closing, I make a few comments about the implications of this small lexical study for three larger issues in NT studies: the type of dining practices portrayed in the NT, the degree of hellenization in Galilee of the first century, and the historical accuracy of the Gospel of John. Before turning to the extant examples, some background on the choice between waiter and guest will be useful. Both of the standard interpretations of the architriklinos cause problems for particular constructions of Jesus. If the archi - triklinos is a guest with a special role to play, that role would probably be similar to that of a symposiarch at a Greek symposium.8 Such a scenario would be inconsistent with the degree of hellenization thought to be possible in a first-century Galilean village.9 Furthermore, if Jesus should be considered modest and temperate, attendance at a stereotypical symposium of the Platonic type would be incompatible with that characterization.10 If, on the other hand, one decides upon a servile status for the architriklinos, Jesus becomes a guest of a wealthy family-indeed, one that has a hierarchy of slaves not only in the household generally but even in the dining room. What is more, Jesus himself effected a successful, extravagant for this rich family by turning a large quantity of water into wine. With evidence such as this, it becomes difficult (but not impossible certainly) to view Jesus as a mendicant advocating a Cynic rejection of civilization. …

Mission-Shaped or Paul-Shaped? Apostolic Challenges to theMission-Shaped Church

AbstractJohn M. Hull has raised a number of criticisms about the understanding of worship found inMission-Shaped Church: Church Planting and Fresh Expressions of Church in a Changing Context. In this article, some of these criticisms are explored further. Analysis of Paul’s proposed reforms to the Lord’s Supper in Corinth show that worship must address social concerns and not focus exclusively on a God-ward aspect. Paul does this by describing the Lord’s Supper as a paradigm for behaviour and world-view using the Greek symposium tradition. Paul’s response to the Corinthian situation raises questions about the suitability of the Homogeneous Unit Principle and its role in mission, as do aspects of the controversy with Peter documented in Galatians 2. His wider exploration of the sacramental dimension of ritual meals (1 Cor. 10–11) further shows that worship cannot be divorced from ethics and behaviour if it is to be truly effective and based on Pauline principles

From Symposium to Eucharist: The Banquet in the Early Christian World (review)

Reviewed by: From Symposium to Eucharist: The Banquet in the Early Christian World Andrea Lieber Dennis E. Smith. From Symposium to Eucharist: The Banquet in the Early Christian World. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003. Pp. xi + 411. From Symposium to Eucharist: The Banquet in the Early Christian World brings together an impressive array of source material on meal traditions in antiquity, focusing on the formal banquet as a social institution in the Greco-Roman world. The book, which began as the author's 1980 Harvard University dissertation, represents the culmination of more than twenty years of research. With chapters on Greco-Roman banquets, philosophical banquets, sacrificial banquets, club banquets, Jewish banquets, Pauline banquet traditions, and banquet scenes in Gospel narratives, Smith's text would be extremely useful for an introductory-level course on custom and culture in the ancient world. The original artistic renderings of banquet scenes featured in chapter one, based primarily on vase paintings and ancient literary sources, are especially useful pedagogical tools. The central argument of the book is straightforward. Placing the Eucharist in its sociocultural context, which he defines as predominantly Greco-Roman in influence, Smith asserts that early Christians dined at table simply because it was Greco-Roman custom to do so. He positions his argument against earlier scholarship on the Eucharist which, he charges, focused too much on the variety of discrete meal forms that might have influenced the Eucharist or traced its origins to a particular type of communal meal (e.g., Jewish Passover seder, Greek symposium). Smith argues instead for a simplified model in which all variations of meals in antiquity are subsumed under the general category of the Greco-Roman banquet. His goal is to "provide a common model that can be utilized for the study of all data on formal meals from the Greco-Roman world" (p. 2) and to prove that "the banquet was a single social institution that pervaded the culture as a whole" (p. 12). This argument is clearly articulated in the opening chapter, with the help of detailed diagrams and figures. In support of his thesis, Smith devotes his remaining chapters to a discussion of various types of ancient meals, highlighting what he sees as their common structure. The most comprehensive chapters are those on the Greco-Roman banquet and the Club banquet. These discussions reflect an impressive expertise with an astounding range of ancient sources. According to Smith's typology, the "banquet as social form" consists of [End Page 263] the following elements: the practice of reclining at table; the division of the meal into two courses (deipnon and symposium); the use of formal invitations; the positioning of couches according to rank; the use of servants; the practice of foot washing and anointment; the designation of a symposiarch to lead the banquet; and the central role of entertainment at the meal. Smith then illustrates the ways in which each of the meals he studies conforms to this basic structure. In his concluding paragraphs, Smith suggests that his approach, which situates early Christianity in its Greco-Roman context, "can provide a surer basis for historical reconstruction of Christian origins" and allow for "a greater appreciation for the diversity of early Christian social formation and theological elaboration." "Furthermore," he adds, "if we take full account of the richness of the earliest Christian meal tradition, we can find in it models for renewal of Christian theology and liturgy today toward a greater focus on community" (p. 287). In the end, however, Smith's earnest attempt to broaden the discussion of Christian origins effectively narrows it with an analytical approach that is overly reductive. Although he successfully demonstrates the influence of Greco-Roman banquets on the world of early Christianity, his single-minded focus on only one aspect of the tradition eclipses the important subtleties that make the Eucharist (not to mention early Christianity as a whole) the fascinating, syncretistic tradition it is. While it is undeniable that the various meal traditions Smith analyzes do reflect the influence of Greco-Roman customs, Smith's typology oversimplifies the issues and presents a deceptively monolithic approach. For example, the main focus on Greco-Roman traditions as the overarching framework almost entirely effaces...

Ῥητορική δειπνίζουσα. Il «banchetto» di Dione di Prusa, Favorino e Luciano

The attentive examination of the passages on Greek symposium in the works of Dio Chrysostom, Favorinus, Lucian, Philostratus, and Aullus Gellius means a significant contribution not only to investigate the development of the sympotical Greek culture, but to inquire on various points of the Greek cultural identity in the Imperial Age.

Ideology, the Symposium, and Archaic Politics

In this essay, I explore the work of two scholars—Ian Morris and Leslie Kurke—and one of their claims: that the archaic Greek symposium served as the site for an anti-polis ideology. I first examine the conceptual underpinnings that guide their understanding of the operation of ideology. I then look closely at the arguments and evidence provided by Morris and Kurke. I argue that their respective conclusions about the symposium are not sustained even by their own evidence but rest on a set of problematic assumptions about the operation of ideology that they have imported into their analysis.

Writing the Meal: Dinner in the Fiction of Eartly Twentieth-Century Women Writers by Diane McGee (review)

Reviewed by: Writing the Meal: Dinner in the Fiction of Early Twentieth-Century Women Writers Gabrielle McIntire (bio) Diane McGee. Writing the Meal: Dinner in the Fiction of Early Twentieth-Century Women Writers University of Toronto Press 2002. vii, 222. $28.95 Early in her study of modernist representations of eating, mealtimes, and the socio-cultural semiotics of 'dinner,' Diane McGee cites Roland Barthes's claim that 'One could say that an entire "world" (social environment) is present in and signified by food'; food, Barthes argues, is 'a system of communication, a body of images, a protocol of usages, situations, and behavior.' McGee's book then goes on to delineate a number of instances in early twentieth-century literature where meals not only intersect with and perform discursive protocol and etiquette, but also illuminate class structures, propriety, ritual, and codes of desire. For her principal sites of inquiry she turns to Edith Wharton, Katherine Mansfield, Kate Chopin, and Virginia Woolf, while we also find brief but telling examples from figures including Nella Larsen, Gertrude Stein, and Isak Dinesen. McGee's inquiry reveals wide-ranging interests, with one of her most provocative threads centring on her examination of the ways eating, socialization, and discourse have been conjoined at least since the Greek symposium. As she phrases it in a chapter devoted to 'Edith Wharton and the Dinner Tables of Old New York,' 'the mouth is not only used to ingest food: speaking is, arguably, a more important part of dinner than eating.' Meals, that is, signify in large part through language, even though their ostensible function as nourishment or social event may appear to be beyond the strict purview of the linguistically discursive. McGee's diversity of approaches - from the literary, to the historical, the anthropological, and the sociological - is indeed one of the most exciting aspects of this study. In her first chapter she stresses an anthropological interest in the material culture of food; in her second she chronicles the historical rise of etiquette manuals, cookbooks, cooking schools, and nutritional 'science'; and in her third chapter, in turning to Edith Wharton, she emphasizes a more explicitly literary focus that will engage her for the rest of the project. McGee's book takes up important questions in the still-burgeoning interdisciplinary fields of literary studies and food culture, nevertheless she sometimes tantalizes us with the promise of more analysis than she delivers. What is missing throughout McGee's study is an adequate theorization of her key terms. As late as chapter 6, she notes that eating and social conventions around mealtimes are both channels and metaphors for larger issues of 'desire' and 'community,' though we never hear exactly how [End Page 487] McGee wants to define these crucial subjects. This lack of explication persists with other central terms in her study. Even though she makes provocative preliminary gestures to Barthes, Tilley, and Lévi-Strauss in her introduction, for the remainder of the text it is difficult to know precisely how she wants to unravel and pursue the connections between food and other corporeal, social, discursive, and psychic phenomena. Furthermore, McGee has a tendency to make rather broad claims - again, without developing the full range of their implications. She suggests at one point that the meal 'civilizes, categorizes, and hierarchizes the raw. Through this process of ordering and transforming the world, cooking can be viewed as the basis of thought.' A few lines further down on the same page, she ventures the following: 'If, arguably, the preparation of food defines humanity, so, on a smaller scale, food habits define both individual and group characteristics.' Putting these limitations aside, McGee does offer interesting observations throughout in support of her main argument that links mealtimes with discourse and culture making. In her section on Katherine Mansfield she notes that 'If the dinner table fails in these stories, this failure is frequently linked with a failure of communication,' while in her discussion of Virginia Woolf she points to the important fact that 'Woolf explores the burden of meaning inherited by twentieth-century hostesses and providers of food: the Victorian ideological model of women's domestic work as a civilizing force.' Her examples are telling...

Per‐Olov Löwdin curriculum vitae

Per‐Olov Löwdin curriculum vitae