Forging Communities: Food and Representation in Medieval and Early Modern Southwestern Europe

Erscheinungsjahr 2018
ISBN: 978-1-68226-068-5
Verlag: University of Arkansas Press

Buch, Englisch, 300 Seiten, Paperback, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 226 mm, Gewicht: 544 g

Reihe: Food and Foodways

Forging Communities explores the importance of the cultivation, provision, trade, and exchange of foods and beverages to mankind’s technological advancement, violent conquest, and maritime exploration. The thirteen essays here show how the sharing of food and drink forged social, religious, and community bonds, and how ceremonial feasts as well as domestic daily meals strengthened ties and solidified ethnoreligious identity through the sharing of food customs. The very act of eating and the pleasure derived from it are metaphorically linked to two other sublime activities of the human experience: sexuality and the search for the divine.

This interdisciplinary study of food in medieval and early modern communities connects threads of history conventionally examined separately or in isolation. The intersection of foodstuffs with politics, religion, economics, and culture enhances our understanding of historical developments and cultural continuities through the centuries, giving insight that today, as much as in the past, we are what we eat and what we eat is never devoid of meaning.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Piera, Montserrat

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtswissenschaft Allgemein
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Alte Geschichte & Archäologie Vor- und Frühgeschichte, prähistorische Archäologie
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Sachkultur, Materielle Kultur

Über Autor(innen)

Montserrat Piera is associate professor of Spanish and Portuguese at Temple University and editor of Remapping Travel Narratives, 1000–1700: To the East and Back Again.