CMRS 201.6
Assignment 1: On Food and Eating
Due Date: Oct. 27-Oct. 31 are scheduled for group presentations on a social aspect of food. "Fact sheet" and your essay are due the same day.
Part One:
"Fact Sheet" on Food Sources in Antiquity
Everyone individually researches a food category for one of the periods and produces a clear one to two page "Fact Sheet" to be distributed to the class.
The "Fact Sheet" should answer the following questions but not be limited to them: what portion of the diet was your food group? What was the nutritional value? Is the food locally grown or imported? Is it for elite consumption or general consumption? How much does geography and custom effect the use of this type of food? What are the primary sources that you used in researching this food type e.g. archaeology, recipe books, medical sources- use as many as possible? other interesting facts about the food type? Problems encountered in researching this food type? Directions for further research?
Style: The "Fact Sheet" should have a heading that clearly identifies the food type, the period (Greek, Roman, Medieval, Renaissance), and geographical region of focus (Greek lands, Italy, Mediterranean region, N. Europe, British Isles).
Use 10 pt font and narrow margins.
Use clear, concise prose.
a) Classical (Greek or Roman)
b) Medieval and Renaissance
Food categories:
- Meat and fowl
- Fish and shellfish
- Grains
- Vegetables and legumes
- olives
- Spices and seasonings (i.e. herbs that add flavour)
- Milk and Cheese
- Processed foods i.e. garum (Roman fish sauce)
- Wine
- Beer
Only 1 person per category and per food type. Sign up sheet will be circulated.
Part Two. Social and Cultural Aspects of Food
A. Choose from the list below a social aspect of food on which you will write your 8-page paper focusing on one of the periods under study (Classical, Medieval, Renaissance).
B. Presentations will be of a small group nature (2-3 people). Ideally, two or three people will have researched the same social/cultural aspect of food but in a different period. The presentation will draw on the expertise of each member of the group. The presentation is to be focused on explicit comparison of the social/cultural aspect of food that your group has studied in different time periods. It should explicitly outline aspects of continuity and change, but also provide reasons for continuity and change. Ideally, there will be eight groups and each group presentation will be 15 minutes long. All members of groups are responsible for being available for working together on this (i.e. practice fulfilling social duties).
- Cooking and cookbooks (who wrote them? who used them?)
- Private feasting/ the private dinner party
- Public feasting/public banquets
- Food and medical practice (herbs, dietetics)
- Religion, food and dining
- Forbidden foods (vegetarianism; pork avoidance; other dietary restrictions)
- Representing food and dining in art
- Representing food in literature
- The politics of food: centralised storage and distribution of food (e.g. the Roman annona or grain dole; food supply questions)
For the written and oral aspects of this assignment you are expected to consult both primary and secondary sources. A minimum of three primary sources and four secondary sources are required.
Where to begin???
The best place to begin is by reading the introduction and relevant period chapter in Pray-Bober's book (see below). This will give you plenty of ideas and plenty of bibliographical references to chase up for your fact sheet and for your work on the social/cultural aspects of food. Also use the Library subject search creatively. Interlibrary loan (ILL) is a very fine thing, too, but they need time to get the material to you, so don't leave it until the last minute. The more info you provide them with, the better. Always fill out the "no longer needed after" box on the electronic form with a date that leaves you time to use the material. Feel free to consult with me or Frank after you have done initial research and reading
Some Primary Textual Sources
Ancient
- Petronius, "Banquet of Trimalchio" in the Satyricon (Penguin edition) - the Roman life of luxury; customs at private banquets; cooking and food
- Archestratos of Gela, in Life of Luxury (1994) - a fascination fish
- Apicius, de re coquinaria
- Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae (Loeb classical Library edition) - a fascinating and puzzling multi volume work on many aspects of food and dining and table talk in the Greco Roman world; a good place to go
- Oppian , Halieutica, (Loeb) - fishy
- Plutarch, Quaestiones convivales in Moralia (vols. 8-9 Loeb) - dining habits, food, dinner table conversation.
- Galen on the properties of foodstuffs has been ordered for the library - what the ancients thought the properties of food were and their relation to health.
- innumerable literary sources
Medieval and renaissance
The Viandier of Taillevent: an edition of all extant manuscripts, Terence Scully, ed.
Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, c1988
- The Medieval and Renaissance food Home page at:
- http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/food.html has numerous primary text sources on line such as what follows. Note well that the on line articles listed at this site are to be avoided.
o recipe books
§ for e.g Le Ménagier de Paris (c. 1393, in French, partial, also an English translation);
§ Du Fait de Cuisine (1420);
§ Two Fifteenth Century Cookery Books dated to 1430 and 1450 which have recipes and the menus of some rather famous dinners like the Coronation banquet of Henry the Fourth (interestingly, described in the Chronicles of Froissart); Liber Cure Cocorum (14th c. English with links to glossary)
§ A translation of Libro del Coch, part one and part two (1529 Spanish)
o The link to http://staff-www.uni-marburg.de/~gloning/kobu.htm has other European cookery, texts and menus, some translated and some not: worth a look; someone who has French might consider working on the Hermolaus Barbarus' description of an Italian wedding banquet (1488)
- Pray Bober, P., Art, Culture and Cuisine (Chicago and London, 1999)
- Wilkins J., D. Harvey, M. Dobson, Food in Antiquity (Exeter, 1995)
- Food: a Culinary History from Antiquity to the Present, eds. Jean-Louis Flandrin and Massimo Montanari; English ed. Albert Sonnenfeld; transl. Clarissa Botsford (New York, 1999).