The Boastful Chef

The Discourse of Food in Ancient Greek Comedy

John Wilkins author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Oxford University Press

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The Boastful Chef cover

It is well known that ancient Greek comedy is interested in food and wine. Many plays conclude with a feast: further, they were produced at festivals of Dionysos where eating and drinking took place. This book explains the importance of food to comedy: it was a medium through which comedy could represent the material, social, agricultural, political and religious worlds to the Greek city-state. Comedy was a powerful cultural commentator partly because the foods that it represented were resonant markers of the culture. There could be no comedy without food. Related genres and artefacts are also considered. The text also contains translations of hundreds of comic fragments; and it reassesses the division of comedy into Sicilian and Attic Old, Middle, and New.

This is a fascinating and original book, spiced with liberal quotations (all translated) from comic fragments alongside discussion of the plays of Aristophanes and Menander * Greece & Rome *
Offers a more multi-sided approach to ancient cooking and its practitioners than any other available * Simon Goldhill, Times Literary Supplement *
A scholarly book * Simon Goldhill, Times Literary Supplement *

ISBN: 9780199240685

Dimensions: 224mm x 146mm x 30mm

Weight: 699g

496 pages