Main entry:

Grieco, Allen J., author.

Title & Author:

Food, social politics and the order of nature in Renaissance Italy / Allen J. Grieco.

Publication:

Florence, Italy : Villa I Tatti - The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies ; Milan, Italy : Officina Libraria, [2019]
©2019
[Cambridge] : Harvard University Press ; Milan, Italy : Officina Libraria
Cremona, Italy : Monotipia Cremonese, 2019

Description:

327 pages, 35 plates : illustrations (chiefly color) ; 21 cm

Series:

Villa I Tatti series ; 34

Notes:
Includes quotations in Italian.
"Foreword" by Christiane Klapisch-Zuber; translated by Lucinda Byatt
Includes bibliographical references (pages 305-318) and index.
I. The Renaissance table in theory and practice -- 1. Meals and mealtimes in late Medieval and Renaissance Italy ; 2. From the cookbook to the table : the Mensa della Signoria and Italian recipes of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries ; 3. Conviviality in a Renaissance court : the Ordini et Officij of the Court of Urbino ; 4. Food at the Ospedale degli Innocenti : medical theory and social groups in mid‐Quattrocento Florence -- II. Social distinctions, dietary theory and classificatory systems -- 5. Food and social classes in late Medieval and Renaissance Italy ; 6. Medieval and Renaissance wines : taste, dietary theory and how to choose the “right” wine (fourteenth–sixteenth centuries) ; 7. Fiordiano Malatesta da Rimini and the ichthyological treatises of the mid-sixteenth century ; 8. Botanical knowledge or poetic understanding? Fruit in Italian Quattrocento poetry ; 9. The social order of nature and the natural order of society in late thirteenth and early fourteenth‐century Italy ; 10. The social politics of pre‐Linnean botanical classification -- III. Food in literary and visual discourse -- 11. What’s in a detail : more chickens in Renaissance birth scenes ; 12. Food and good manners in Florentine Last Suppers ; 13. The eaten heart : social order, sexuality and the wilderness ; 14. Vegetable diets, hermits and melancholy in late Medieval and Renaissance Italy.
Previously published essays in English, French and Italian, now all in English translation.

Summary:

The act of eating is a basic human need. Yet, in all societies, quotidian choices regarding food and its consumption reveal some of the most deeply rooted of shared cultural conventions. Food goes beyond issues relating to biological needs and nutrition or production and commerce; it also engages with social and cultural criteria that determine what dishes are prepared on what occasions, and unveils the politics of the table via the rituals appropriate to different meals. This book approaches the history of food in Late Medieval and Renaissance Italy through an interdisciplinary prism of sources ranging from epistolary correspondence, literature (both high and low), medical and dietary treatises, cosmographic theory and iconographic evidence. Using a variety of analytical methods and theoretical approaches, it moves food firmly into the arena of Late Medieval and Renaissance history, providing an essential key to deciphering the material and metaphorical complexity of this period in Italian and European history."--Page 4 of printed paper wrapper

ISBN:

9780674244085 (Harvard University Press)
0674244087 (Harvard University Press)
9788833670393 (Officina Libraria)
8833670392 (Officina Libraria)

Subject:

Food Social aspects Italy History.
Food habits Italy History.
Food in literature.
Plants, Useful Italy History.
Aliments Aspect social Italie Histoire.
Habitudes alimentaires Italie Histoire.
Aliments dans la littérature.
Plantes utiles Italie Histoire.
Food habits
Food Social aspects
Plants, Useful
Botanik
Diät
Ernährung
Gesellschaft
Ichthyologie
Lebensmittel
Medizin
Soziale Situation
Sozialpolitik
Italy
Essen
Italien
General customs Italian Peninsula & adjacent islands

Form/genre:

History

Added entries:

Klapisch-Zuber, Christiane, writer of preface.
Byatt, Lucinda, translator.
Villa I Tatti (Series) ; 34.

Holdings:

Location: Library main 307685
Call No.: BIB 253167
Status: Available