The Pleasures and Horrors of Eating

Food in literature contains a host of symbols, both comforting and unnerving. The authors of the essays in this compilation seem to lean toward the latter. In their look at images of food and eating from the sixteenth century to the present, they dwell on images of cannibalism and self-denial in authors from Shakespeare and Bryon to Amy Tan and Stephen Sondheim. Even British cooking programs have an element of horror. Some contributors balance this slightly with comments on food in Dickens' Martin Chuzzlewit and Lear's silly food limericks. Some papers are based on a presentist view that renunciation of food for religious or health reasons is an early modern phenomenon. While each essay has a bibliography the book lacks an index and the contributors are identified only by name. Distributed in North America by The David Brown Book Co. Annotation c2011 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)