Food in Literature: Vicarious Pleasure or Essential Function?
A Symposium hosted by the Research Centre for the History of Food and Drink
31 March - 1 April 2000
 Report by Joanna Jenkins
On the evening of Friday 31 March and all day Saturday 1 April the Research Centre hosted a symposium entitled Food in Literature: Vicarious Pleasure or Essential Function.
The symposium celebrated the return of Distinguished Visiting Scholar Marion Halligan. Marion’s paper, given on Friday evening before a sumptuous meal at Jolleys Boathouse, was entitled "No Thanks, I’m not Hungry". In the paper Marion turned her attention to the negative role that food can play in literature. Her key words for this examination were dismay, disgust, danger, death and disaster. She mused on what would have become of many works of fiction had the protagonists said "No Thanks, I’m not Hungry", rather than accepting the food offered, as the assent to eat is often the catalyst for the action of the narrative. Marion concentrated particularly on the role of food in two novels of Emile Zola, Nana and L’Assommoir, and provided many interesting examples from them of food as a metaphor for life, death and everything in between.
We began early on Saturday morning in two senses, for it was early in the morning (9 o’clock!) and the papers dealt with earlier times, the mediaeval and early modern eras. Gary Martin led us into the world of the Icelandic saga with his paper "Whale Meat Again? The Meal in the Icelandic Saga". Gary explained that food is not often described in the sagas as the variety of foods eaten by the Icelanders was limited because of the small amount of arable land. The main method of cooking was boiling, Gary postulated that this may have been tied in with the limited amount of timber for fires and boiling being the most rapid and, therefore, economical form of cooking. In the sagas, the sociability of the meal is more important than the food served and hospitality is a matter of honour, thus these themes warrant more description than the food.
Lynn Martin then entertained us with the exploits of the unruly woman with his paper "The Role of Drinking in the Male Construction of the Unruly Woman". The paper drew on five examples of misogynist popular literature from the fourteenth to seventeenth centuries. These reveal the male fear of women who entered the male preserve of the tavern, who spent money on entertainment for themselves rather than on the household and who spent time drinking rather than working for the household. Lynn also postulated that perhaps these songs, stories and poems taught women insubordination and gave them a script for how they might behave to empower themselves. Thus, this misogynist literature might have, in fact, worked against its purpose.
After morning coffee, we delved into the carnivalesque. The first paper "From Rabelais to Ronald McDonald: An Examination of Food in the Carnivalesque" was presented by the joker-hatted Colin Sheringham. Colin first provided his audience with jelly babies and then told us we were cannibals. His paper used the work of social anthropologist Mary Douglas, about the structure and meanings of the meal, to examine the meaning of food in the works of Rabelais. Colin also put forth the hypothesis that McDonalds is our modern day version of the carnival with its topsy-turvy world where we are our own waiter, children are treated like adults, there is an emphasis on play and Ronald McDonald is the joker/fool.
Jennifer Hillier then gave us an in depth look at James Joyce’s Ulysses through the theories of the Mikhail Bakhtin regarding the carnivalesque and the body. Many critics have regarded food as merely incidental in Ulysses, but Jennifer emphasised its importance as part of the everyday in Dublin which Joyce describes. Jennifer claimed that from the introduction of the central character, "Mr Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls", to the very end of the novel, food is as vital to Joyce’s work as it is to the human body. Jennifer also explored various facets of the relationship between Bloom and Stephen Dedalus.
We enjoyed a wonderful lunch catered by Cath Kerry Food and then launched into a feast of pork, provided by Angela Heuzenroeder with her paper "Pork à la mode: A Survey of the Treatment of the Pig as a Source of Food from ‘A Dissertation upon Roast Pig’ to Marie Darrieussecq". Angela suggested the pig’s intelligence, personality and similarities with humans may be responsible for its prevalence in our literature. The pig has been used for a wide number of effects in literature and she gave us a taste of five. In "A Dissertation upon a Roast Pig", although he is greedily eating the succulent roast pork, Charles Lamb identifies with the animal. In sections from Jude the Obscure and Sun on the Stubble, both Thomas Hardy and Colin Thiele are more interested in commenting on human relationships and in the collaboration of people than the pig itself. Both Günter Grass and Marie Darrieussecq use their pig-based pieces to comment on contemporary politics. Angela’s "day job" as a teacher librarian in a primary school was evidenced as she read to us most wonderfully from the selected writings, putting on accents and using visual aids.
Richard Johnstone then took us on a journey through food in contemporary literature in his paper "Love, Death and Convenience Food". Acknowledging the difficulties with definition, Richard explored the way in which fast food has played the "villain" in recent novels representing death, detachment, disillusion and destruction. Fast food has become an evil force beyond the badness of its colourings, preservatives and other additives. Richard also mused on a new trend, in the novels of authors such as Anne Tyler and Nick Hornby, where fast food has become good and slow food bad. Fast food becomes unpretentious, honest, reassuring and comfortably predictable while slow, home-cooked traditional foods are pretentious and based on images in glossy magazines. Richard suggested that fast food can now also be read as a rebellion against the "diet police".
After afternoon coffee, Barbara Santich explored matters of the heart in her paper "Revenge, Cannibalism and Self-Denial". She looked at late mediaeval and early Renaissance stories from Italy and France which follow the same basic storyline – lovers are found out by a jealous husband who kills his wife’s lover then feeds her his heart. She eats it unknowingly claiming it to be the most delicious dish she has ever eaten and once she is told that it was her lover’s heart, refuses to ever eat anything else again and dies. Barbara’s analysis of these stories interpreted them not about eating, as such, but concentrated on the identification between a love of eating and a love of sex. The stories themselves were thrilling and Barbara’s presentation of them exciting.
We finished the day with a general panel discussion involving those who gave papers and the audience. Various topics were examined, including the fact that all of the papers had discussed food as "essential function" and not "vicarious pleasure". Both panel and audience were at a loss to think of an example of food in literature as "vicarious pleasure", except perhaps in some children’s books. Even this is debatable, however, as the lively discussion that followed showed.
All in all the symposium provided a scrumptious selection of thoughts and views about food in literature.
Joanna Jenkins recently completed her honours degree in the Department of History at the University of Adelaide.
The title of her thesis is Consuming Words: The Development of Food Writing in South Australia from Post-World War II to the Present.
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