Customer Reviews

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

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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.