Aguecheek's Beef, Belch's Hiccup, and Other Gastronomic Interjections: Literature, Culture, and Food Among the Early Moderns [Hardcover]

Robert Appelbaum (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 15, 2006

We didn’t always eat the way we do today, or think and feel about eating as we now do. But we can trace the roots of our own eating culture back to the culinary world of early modern Europe, which invented cutlery, haute cuisine, the weight-loss diet, and much else besides. Aguecheek’s Beef, Belch’s Hiccup tells the story of how early modern Europeans put food into words and words into food, and created an experience all their own. Named after characters in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, this lively study draws on sources ranging from cookbooks to comic novels, and examines both the highest ideals of culinary culture and its most grotesque, ridiculous and pathetic expressions. Robert Appelbaum paints a vivid picture of a world in which food was many things—from a symbol of prestige and sociability to a cause for religious and economic struggle—but always represented the primacy of materiality in life.

Peppered with illustrations and a handful of recipes, Aguecheek’s Beef, Belch’s Hiccup will appeal to anyone interested in early modern literature or the history of food.

(20070223)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Appelbaum explores, chapter by chapter, the different ways in which early modern authors write about food. . . . [He]

persuades us to ask searching questions about brief culinary asides in 16th-century literature and to recognise the false clues by which some commentators have been misled. . . . Readers learn almost as much about early modern food as about the literature that digests it."—Times Higher Education Supplement

(Andrew Dalby Times Higher Education Supplement )

"An accessible and engaging exploration of the significance of food in early modern literature and social practice. . . . The useful material Appelbaum incorporates into his interpretation of these texts and into his study as a whole, and his attention both to detail and to broader social conditions and literary trends, make this a useful book for a wide range of readers."—Jan Purnis, Renaissance Quarterly

(Jan Purnis Renaissance Quarterly )

"[The] study is expansive, ambitious, learned, and often both startling and delightful. . . . The really notable thing about Aguecheek''s Beef is its erudite yet genial breadth of vision, which marks it as a major sourcebook for future scholars working in the field of food studies. Applebaum comes as close as possible to offering readers a unified field theory of early modern alimentary behavior. . . . A study of marvelous richnes and diversity."—Bruce Boehrer, Clio

(Bruce Boehrer Clio )

"The triangulation among print documents from a diverse and expansive canon; the turns, as well as the minutiae, of grand events; and the informed speculation about material aspects of existence, yield rich, satisfying results."

(Julia Abramson Journal of Interdisciplinary History )

"I consider this book excellent in almost every regard. Applebaum''s scholarship is deep, his prose immensely readable, and his thesis compelling from beginning to end. . . . His ability to see in very specific examples . . . the larger lineaments of a culture''s attitudes toward itself makes for a lively intellectual journey."

(Thomas G. Olsen Sixteenth Century Journal )

"An insightful and thought-provoking book and the arguments Applebaum makes . . . are already shaping scholarship on this important branch of cultural studies about the ideational meanings of food, and the relationship between literature and food."

(Claire Jowitt Key Words )

About the Author

Robert Appelbaum is professor of English literature at Uppsala University, Sweden.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 376 pages
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press; 1 edition (December 15, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0226021262
• ISBN-13: 978-0226021263
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,254,394 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Robert Appelbaum was born in New York City, raised in Cleveland and Chicago, and educated at the University of Chicago and the University of California, Berkeley. Before receiving his Ph.D., he worked as a language school director, an art dealer, and -- while he studied and wrote -- a limousine driver. In 2004 he moved to the northwest of England, where he currently teaches at Lancaster University. In 2011 he accepted the additional post of Professor of English Literature at Uppsala University, Sweden. Professor Appelbaum's second book, Aguecheek's Beef, won the 2007 Roland H. Bainton Prize, and more recent projects have won awards from the British Academy, the Leverhulme Trust, and the British Arts and Humanities Research Council. Trained as an expert in the poetry and prose of the English Renaissance, he has most recently branched out into food studies and terrorism studies.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Groundbreaking, March 18, 2011

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Robocrit (United Kingdom) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Aguecheek's Beef, Belch's Hiccup, and Other Gastronomic Interjections: Literature, Culture, and Food Among the Early Moderns (Hardcover)

There have been a lot of essays and books published recently on literature and food, but this is groundbreaking granddaddy of them all. It covers a lot of time and space, from 1470 to 1740 or thereabouts, and from Italy to Brazil, but it creates a picture of how food, culture and literature intersected in the early modern era that is at once learned and exhilarating.

It's not always easygoing, because the writer likes his literary and cultural theory, and he likes to write in long and bulging waves of prose, but it is always rewarding. Who knew that a hiccup could have so many meanings in the Renaissance, or that pickled herring could be a serious symbol of civilisation? Who knew that cookbooks were a serious form of literature as early as 1470, or that when Shakespeare has Hamlet refer to 'funeral baked meats' he is alluding to a whole worldview, religious and political, as well as a way to make pies?

No one interested in the history and culture of food, or for that matter the history of literature, can afford to miss this book.