A History of Food in Literature

From the Fourteenth Century to the Present

Charlotte Boyce, Joan Fitzpatrick

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780415840514
• eBook ISBN: 9781135022068
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

When novels, plays and poems refer to food, they are often doing much more than we might think. Recent critical thinking suggests that depictions of food in literary works can help to explain the complex relationship between the body, subjectivity and social structures. A History of Food in Literature provides a clear and comprehensive overview of significant episodes of food and its consumption in major canonical literary works from the medieval period to the twenty-first century. This volume contextualises these works with reference to pertinent historical and cultural materials such as cookery books, diaries and guides to good health, in order to engage with the critical debate on food and literature and how ideas of food have developed over the centuries.

Organised chronologically and examining certain key writers from every period, including Chaucer, Shakespeare, Austen and Dickens, this book's enlightening critical analysis makes it relevant for anyone interested in the study of food and literature.

1
Pilgrims and Partridges (1350–1550)

Joan Fitzpatrick

The pilgrims and partridges in this chapter’s title signify opposites: the pilgrim as a religiously motivated traveller might be expected to be a man or woman with moderate habits, whilst the partridge suggests the kind of plenty ordinarily enjoyed by the nobility. Yet the medieval literary texts here considered – William Langland’s Piers Plowman; the anonymous Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales; and The Book of Margery Kempe – reveal the manner in which such simple, dichotomizing categories slip: the man and woman who proclaim their godliness do not always behave as they ought when it comes to appetite and providing sustenance to others, and whilst the nobleman often demonstrates real hospitality his behaviour too is sometimes less than straightforward. It is not clear exactly when Piers Plowman, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight or The Canterbury Tales were written but all are late-fourteenth-century poems, and what emerges in these texts and in The Book of Margery Kempe also is a concern with religious authority and social rank, with these related concepts often explored via references to food. Across the texts a number of themes occur: gluttony; hunger; hunting; feasting; the motif of the apple, and even cannibalism. The contextual material that helps us make sense of the religiously inflected food references in these texts are: the Bible, often books from the Old Testament; the Rule of St Benedict, a list of precepts probably written early in the sixth century by Benedict for those living in monastic communities (Benedict 1952); and The Golden Legend, a collection of hagiographies compiled around the year 1260 by Jacobus De Voraigne (2012). Other contextual material includes cookery books, amongst them The Forme of Cury, a collection of fourteenth-century recipes reputedly gathered by the cooks of King Richard II. Rules for ecclesiastics were provided by Benedict and other rules applied to other social groups: the aristocratic hunter was provided with a guide in Gaston De Foix’s Livre de Chasse, translated into English as Master of Game, and rules dictating what it takes to be a good knight were provided by Ramon Lull’s The Book of the Order of Chivalry (Lull 1926). Rules regarding dietary health – specifically what one ought to eat, when one ought to eat it, and why – are the focus of the hugely influential medieval regimen or dietary Regimen sanitatis Salerni (The Salernitan Rule of Health).¹

William Langland, Piers Plowman (late 1300s)

In Piers Plowman, William Langland’s dream-vision poem, we get an insight into fourteenth-century English society, with its strict hierarchical structure and the dominance of organized religion. The poem is an attack against corruption, specifically a corrupt clergy, and represents a call for the Catholic Church to return to its true spirit of faith and charity, justice and mercy, represented by the Christ-like ploughman Piers. In the prologue to the poem, Will – the narrator who represents the Christian everyman on his journey through the world – falls asleep one May morning on the Malvern Hills and dreams of a landscape featuring a tower (heaven), a dungeon (hell) and a field full of people who include ploughmen, hermits, tradesmen, jesters, beggars, pilgrims, friars and a pardoner. After discussion of a king and the rats and mice who are controlled by a cat, Will the Dreamer returns to the field full of people that includes noblemen, citizens and serfs.² Also present in the field are bakers, brewsters (female brewers), butchers and other tradesmen, as well as labourers. There are cooks, whose serving-men advertise their wares by crying ‘hote pies, hote! / Gode gris and gees!’ (pro.225–226) [hot pies, hot! / Good pork and geese!], and taverners who advertise their wines.³ A. V. C. Schmidt rightly observes that the field functions as an important image for Langland since most of medieval England that was inhabited was cultivated field and the rest wilderness; all human life is here and, when dealing with the physical and spiritual struggles of humankind, the field with its labourers working to produce food is a dominant and recurring image (Schmidt 1980, 311). Will’s comment upon those present in the field is sometimes laudatory: the ploughmen work hard planting and sowing the fields, even if they ‘wonnen that wastours with glotonye destruyeth’ (pro.22) [achieve that which wasters destroy with their gluttony], and the hermits devote their lives to prayer rather than lechery. However, most of the people present are morally lacking: the jesters have foul mouths, and the pilgrims are hypocrites. There is a sense also that those who advertise their wares, especially food and drink, are to be regarded with suspicion because they are selling sustenance, something that emerges also in later chapters of this book, for example in Satan’s silver-tongued seduction of Eve (Chapter 3) and the sales patter of the goblin men in ‘Goblin Market’ (Chapter 5). The beggars and the friar, like those who benefit from the ploughmen’s hard work, are motivated by greed: beggars who are full of bread fight over ale before slothfully going to bed and rising full of ribaldry; the friars also preach for their own benefit and the pardoner is described as a glutton and a lecher, supported by the people’s gold.

The sin of gluttony is repeatedly invoked as a way of signalling moral corruption in Piers Plowman. In Passus 1 Will the Dreamer meets Holy Church – the true church rather than the earthly institution that is full of corruption – and she advises him how men ought to live. God has provided humankind with clothing, food and drink but these gifts are often abused. Gluttony included excessive drinking as well as eating too much and Holy Church specifically warns against the former: a man ought to drink when his throat is dry but not to the extent that he is incapacitated and unable to work. She offers the biblical example of Lot who allowed his two daughters to get him drunk on wine and then committed incest with them, resulting in evil offspring (Genesis 19:30–38).⁴ Holy Church emphasizes the importance of moderation: ‘Mesure is medcyne’ (1.35) [moderation is medicine] because the devil uses man’s fleshly appetites to gain access to his soul: ‘þe fende and þi flesch folweth þe to-gidere’ (1.40) [the devil and the flesh follow you together]. Gluttony was a familar allegorical figure in medieval culture, often making an appearance in morality plays; in the Latin emblems of Andreas Alciatus the sin is found in the guzzling pelican that feeds upon its own parent (Houle 1972; Daly et al. 1985, no. 91, 96).⁵ The medieval dietary Regimen sanitatis Salerni urges the man who would be healthy and virtuous to drink only in moderation (De Mediolano and Harington 1607, A8v).

In Passus 2 Will describes the marriage of Meed the maid to False Fickle-Tongue; she is the enemy of Holy Church, her name signalling corrupt reward or bribery. G. R. Owst claims that her origins can be traced back to a story of the daughters of the devil and, as Margaret Kim notes, she ‘is often associated with an emerging market economy in the later middle ages’, making the desire for the consumption of worldly goods available to more of the people (Owst 1961, 93–97; Kim 2004, 357), something that will become more apparent in later chapters, when food and other necessities become fully implicated in the commercial economy. Guile presents Meed and False Fickle-Tongue with sins as wedding gifts, some in the form of land and property, for example the earldom of envy and wrath and the lordship of lechery. Gluttony is also presented to them:

Glotonye he gaf hem eke and grete othes togydere,
And alday to drynke at dyuerse tauernes,
And there to iangle and to iape and iugge here euene cristene,
And in fastyng-dayes to frete ar ful tyme were.
And þanne to sitten and soupen til slepe hem assaille,
And breden as burgh-swyn and bedden hem esily
Tyl sleuth and slepe slyken his sides;
And þanne wanhope to awake hym so with no wille to amend,
For he leueth be lost – þis is here last ende.

(2.92–100)

[Gluttony he gave them also and great oaths together
And all day to drink at diverse taverns
There to jangle and jape and judge their fellow Christians
And on fast days to feed before the full time
And then sit and sup till sleep them assail,
And to breed like town swine and rest at their ease
Till sloth and sleep make sleek their sides;
And then Despair to awaken them so with no will to amend;
They believe themselves lost: this is their last end.]

Only one meal was allowed on fast days and it was not permitted before noon (‘the full time’) but gluttony will make a man drink and eat all day. As William Ian Miller indicates, gluttony was considered one of many ‘vices of the mouth’ that included ‘lying, backbiting, blaspheming, boasting, perjury, and grumbling’ (Miller 1997, 99), so gluttony and his pal ‘grete othes’ are well suited ‘to iangle and to iape and iugge’ together.

Towards the end of Passus 2, when the marriage is disrupted, Liar, one of the guests, runs off and he is sought first by ‘leeches’ (2.223) [doctors] inspecting urine samples and then ‘Spiceres spoke with hym to spien here ware, / For he couth of here craft and knewe many gommes’ (2.225–226) [Spicers spoke with him to inspect their wares, / For he knew of their craft and knew many gums]. Both are lying to their customers: the doctors giving false diagnoses and the spicers selling inferior goods they pretend are of high quality (spices were expensive and it was a myth that they were used to disguise bad food because they would not have been wasted in this manner). In Passus 3 the debate between Meed and Conscience is attended by a range of social groups, including members of the victualling trade:

Brewesteres and bakesteres, bocheres and cokes;
For þise aren men on þis molde þat moste harme worcheth
To þe pore peple þat parcel-mele buggen.
For they poysoun þe peple priueliche and oft;
Thei rychen þorw regraterye and rentes hem buggen
With þat þe pore people shulde put in here wombe

(3.79–84)

[Brewsters and bakers, butchers and cooks,
For these are the men in this world that work the most harm
To the poor people that buy piece-meal.
For they poison the people secretly and oft,
They get rich through retailing and buy themselves rents
With what the poor people should put in their bellies]

As Paul Hammond points out, adulteration of food and drink was a real problem in the medieval period (and indeed beyond, reaching an apogee in the nineteenth century, as we see in Chapter 5) and he provides numerous examples of the practice in medieval London, including bread found to have contained sand, wine with pitch added to it, and attempts to pass off spices with false colouring (Hammond 1993, 80–90). It is the job of the mayors and those who enforce the law to stop such practices but they are in league with Meed.

In Passus 5 Langland personifies Gluttony, who is on his way to church to make a confession when he is distracted by a brewster called Betty who tells him ‘I haue gode ale, gossib’ (5.310) [‘I have good ale, gossip’], the word ‘gossib’ suggesting they are familiar, and perhaps specifically drinking companions, as J. A. W. Bennett suggests (Langland 1976, 72n310). Women brewers, known as brewsters or alewives, produced most of the ale consumed in medieval England; ale-brewing was mainly small scale and domestic, so women could brew ale in small batches and sell it from home (Clark 1978, 51; Bennett 1996). Brewsters had a bad reputation in the period: suspected of adulterating their ale, frequently with water but also with salt and resin, they were also often accused of selling customers a short measure (Hammond 1993, 84–87). Avarice, the sin described just before we hear of Gluttony, tells how his wife, Rose, is ‘a webbe and wollen cloth made’ (5.215) [a weaver who makes woollen cloth], and she also is a brewster:

I bouȝte hir barly malte; she brew it to selle,
Peny ale and podyng ale she poured togideres
For laboreres and for low folke; þat lay by hymselue.
The best ale lay in my boure or in my bedchambre,
And who-so bummed þer-of bouȝte it þer-after,
A galoun for a grote, god wote, no lesse;
And ȝit it cam in cupmel; þis crafte my wyf vsed.

(5.219–225)

[I bought her barley malt; she brewed it to sell.
Penny-ale and pudding-ale she poured together
For labourers and for low folk; that was kept by itself.
The best ale lay in my bower or in my bedchamber
And whoso tasted thereof bought it thereafter
A gallon for a groat, God knows, no less;
And yet it came in cupfuls; this craft my wife used.]

Penny ale was cheap and so drunk by the less well off; pudding ale was ale that had been brewed for only a few hours, without allowing the dregs to settle, and was thus thick and of inferior quality (Wilson 1976, 334). Rose the brewster allows her customers to taste the best ale but then sells them the ale that is a mixture of the cheap and inferior kind. Male brewers also come under Langland’s fire: in Passus 19 a brewer complains about the teachings of Conscience, specifically regarding the spirit of justice, because he wants to sell the ‘dregges & draffe’ [the dregs and draff] of his ale and pass off mild ale for strong (19.397–398).

When Langland’s Gluttony asks Betty the brewster if she has any hot spices, she replies: ‘I haue peper and piones … and a pounde of garlike, / A ferthyngworth of fenel-seed for fastyngdayes’ (5.311–313) [‘I have pepper and peony seed … and a pound of garlic, / A farthing worth of fennel-seed for fastings’]. Seeds and spices would have been available in the alehouse to use during brewing, as J. A. W. Bennett notes, and the suggestion that seeds would not quite count as food and so could be nibbled on a fasting day is plausible (Langland 1976, 172n311–313). It is less clear that Gluttony wants the seeds for medicinal purposes, possibly as a remedy for excess wind, as Bennett suggests, but Langland presumably would have been aware of the virtues of certain spices. The Regimen sanitatis Salerni emphasizes the medicinal properties of pepper, which helps treat a windy stomach, coughs, phlegm and agues, and fennel seed was credited with expelling poison, correcting agues, settling the stomach and improving the sight...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• CONTENTS
• Introduction
• 1 Pilgrims and partridges (1350–1550)
• 2 Bodily health and spiritual wealth (1550–1650)
• 3 Adventures in England and beyond its shores (1650–1750)
• 4 Luxury, gluttony, domestic economy and ethical eating (1750–1830)
• 5 ‘Come buy, come buy . . . I have no copper in my purse’: hunger, indulgence, desire and adulteration (1830–1898)
• 6 You are what you eat?: Food and the politics of identity (1899–2003)
• Conclusion
• Index