Commensality

doi:10.1017/9781108661492.002

Chapter 1 - Commensality

from Part I - Origins

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 June 2018

David B. Goldstein

Edited by

Gitanjali G. Shahani

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Gitanjali G. Shahani: Affiliation:
San Francisco State University

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Summary

Literary and historical studies have tended to focus primarily on what social scientists call the culinary, or the “what of eating”—the food on our plates, how it got there, and what it does to us. But of equal importance is the commensal, or the “how of eating”—how acts of sharing food help construct self-other relationships, group interactions, and indeed whole societies. This essay considers the role of commensality in literature through several lenses, using illustrations from works from the Greeks to the contemporary period. Texts discussed include Plato’s Gorgias, Aristophanes’ Knights, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Shakespeare’s plays, Gertrude Stein’s Tender Buttons, Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, and Anita Desai’s Fasting, Feasting.

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Type: Chapter
Information: Food and Literature , pp. 39 - 58
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108661492.002 [Opens in a new window]
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2018

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