Jason König succeeds at offering a truly magnificent feat. We encounter his understanding of the literary traditions of banqueting when he presents the works of Plutarch or Clement or Macrobius or many others. König reveals how they weave voices past and present, obscuring such distinctions. His encyclopedic thoroughness illustrates how these authors push the boundary between proliferation and control. Exploring this tension he draws upon the methodological work of Mikhail Bakhtin. As guests at this feast we experience this proliferation as well. König argues that others have “view[ed] the work of imperial-period authors as minor footnotes in the afterlife of the Platonic symposium tradition” (14), and he aims to correct this. His remarkable notes and bibliography match his ambition, offering current and key primary and secondary sources for these many varied texts. This book should be essential reading for anyone interested in meals, ancient narratives, or abundance and control.
König explores these literary representations of meals and table talk over the course of twelve rich chapters divided into two major sections. In the first section he introduces imperial era literature related to dining traditions. Following his introduction, each chapter reveals his skillful reading of yet another author, yet another text: Plutarch; Athenaeus; a quick review of New Testament and earliest Christian contributions; Clement; Methodius; Augustine; Chrysostom; Julian; and Macrobius. He envelops the reader in particulars of meal customs while simultaneously invoking Plato, his symposium, and other earlier meals. He particularly highlights the blurred distinctions between past and present. König repeatedly illustrates how these ancient authors make a reader work to keep track of where one voice ends and another begins. König argues that “Athenaeus' editors have generally underestimated the importance of that fact in their eagerness to identify each speaking voice firmly” (109). In contrast, König reveals how voices from centuries apart may enter into dialogue with one another, “the sympotic setting thus allows Athenaeus to dissolve the time barriers of the past, allowing authors of very different times to speak together, albeit often in a rather precarious fashion” (106). He invokes Bakhtin to consider further what it means that they seem to speak to one another, explaining Bakhtin's “presentation of utterances which seem to blend two different voices, or to contain within them the marks of dialogue with some unnamed other—what he refers to as ‘double-voiced speech’” (53). König finds this to be a suggestive model for thinking about sympotic narratives. He also argues that this focus reveals that later authors, especially Christian authors, move to a more monologic approach to table talk, perhaps signaling an interest in a less shared, more singular authority.
In the second section he expands on this trend and seeks to “chart the ways in which sympotic models of argumentation . . . came to be viewed increasingly as problematic within early Christian and late antique culture” (viii). Using other facets of Bakhtin he also wants to observe the grotesque in these later meals, and that there is a mutual entanglement of high and low (236). He considers Diogenes Laertius; contemporary mosaics; Lucian; Alciphron; Longus; Achilles Tatius; Petronius; Apuleius; Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles; Athanasius; Palladius; Jerome; and the History of the Monks in Egypt. His attention to dining in these many works offers new perspectives on texts usually approached from other directions.
Had König's goal only been to correct the record as to the contributions of these many texts, this alone would have been a massive undertaking. But in addition he seeks “to examine the way in which Christian authors rewrite their Greco-Roman heritage” (viii). On one level he is remarkably adept at this, despite his admission, as a classicist, to being a newcomer to the Christian materials. His case studies present a rich collection of insights. I agree also with his assessment that the earlier interest in “Christian commensality” overemphasized “realia” with only “quite brief attention to the way in which these texts function as narratives” (14). Nevertheless, he recognizes so much fascinating “rewriting” by both Christians and non-Christians in Late Antiquity that it competes with his determination to reify the differences in Christian authors rewriting in “defamiliarising” ways (354). He argues that Christian literature moves away from symposiastic presentations due to the tendency to include women, anxiety about bodies, and attitudes toward dialogue (139–141), but his wonderful chapter on Methodius's intricate use of symposiastic dialogic tradition at a women's banquet undercuts his own distinction. He claims that Constantine becoming Christian “was to change irrevocably the role of Christianity in the culture of the Roman empire” (177), even as he presents ideas and sources that recognize no immediate shift. Although his deft unpacking of his texts shows careful nuancing, his analysis does not expand to consider differences or interactions between one variety of early Christianity and another. While he does not overlook Judaism in his exploration of earlier imperial era banqueting, his move to Late Antiquity does not likewise consider the Jews of this later moment. Overall his focus on meals as a common denominator reveals many important possibilities, which he leaves for other to explore further.
Ultimately we come away from König's book filled with voices of different pasts invoked by the ongoing table talk. In other words, we come away from such a table as König brings to life. I am richer for having read this book and I would not hesitate to recommend it.
