Eating and Ethics in Shakespeare's England - Hardcover

Goldstein, David B.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1107039061 ISBN 13: 9781107039063

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2013

Synopsis

David B. Goldstein argues for a new understanding of Renaissance England from the perspective of communal eating. Rather than focus on traditional models of interiority, choice and consumption, Goldstein demonstrates that eating offered a central paradigm for the ethics of community formation. The book examines how sharing food helps build, demarcate and destroy relationships – between eater and eaten, between self and other, and among different groups. Tracing these eating relations from 1547 to 1680 - through Shakespeare, Milton, religious writers and recipe book authors - Goldstein shows that to think about eating was to engage in complex reflections about the body's role in society. In the process, he radically rethinks the communal importance of the Protestant Eucharist. Combining historicist literary analysis with insights from social science and philosophy, the book's arguments reverberate well beyond the Renaissance. Ultimately, Eating and Ethics in Shakespeare's England forces us to rethink our own relationship to food.

About this title

Book Description:

David B. Goldstein argues for a new understanding of Shakespeare and early modern English writing from the perspective of communal eating. Taking up issues of ecology, gender, book history, philosophy, religious pluralism, colonialism and material culture, this book ultimately forces us to rethink our own relationship to food.

About the Author:

David B. Goldstein is Associate Professor of English at York University, Toronto. He writes on issues related to Shakespeare, early modern and Renaissance literature, food studies and contemporary poetry. He has received numerous grants and awards, including fellowships at the Huntington Library, the Lilly Library and the University of Wisconsin, Madison. A former food magazine editor and restaurant critic, he is also a widely published poet.

About this edition

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 1107039061
• ISBN 13: 9781107039063
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 290