At the Table: Metaphorical and Material Cultures of Food in Medieval and Early Modern Europe

This volume surveys recent studies of the metaphorical and material facets of food in medieval and early modern Europe. Ranging from literary, historical, and political analyses to archaeological and botanical ones, this collection explores food as a nexus of pre-modern European culture. Food and feasting are understood not simply as the consumption of material goods but also as the figurative and symbolic representations of culture, which Mauss has termed a 'total social fact'. To understand the myriad ways in which discourses about food and feasting are mobilized during this period is to better understand the fundamental role food and feasting played in the development of Europeans' habitual patterns of behaviour and of thought.