Synopses & Reviews
Sharing a grand meal has always been a complex social event. Feasts have been used to celebrate significant occasions, to parade rank and hierarchy, and to flatter and influence people. There has always been a theatrical element to the feast as well-from the nude dancers who entertained dinner guests in ancient Greece to the restrained rigors of the Victorian dinner party.
Sir Roy Strong examines this cultural phenomenon with knowledge, wit, and style-beginning with the ninth century B.C., when a Babylonian emperor discreetly invited seventy thousand guests for a ten-day celebration, and ending early in the twentieth century, by which time feasts had become somewhat more modest. Always attuned to how these celebrations mirror the societies that hold them and to the way they reflect shifts in power and class, this beautifully illustrated book offers a lively and illuminating history of grand eating.
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Review
U. K. PRAISE FOR FEAST
"One of Britain's Living National Treasures . . . Strong is an acute observer of social nuance, and never less than a congenial companion through these millennia of convivial excess. Only the puritan-or the seriously dyspeptic-could fail to enjoy this book." -The Independent
"Strong has dug up these gems from what must have been a blizzard of documents and books, but his clear, scholarly eye has focused on the telling detail rather than showy frippery." -The Daily Telegraph
Review
"It is a good thing to have Šalamun's work in English. Some of it is very funny and graceful. All of it has provocation and imaginative intensity and aesthetic risk."—Robert Hass, former Poet Laureate of the United States.
"Šalamun's poems...are comic, worldly, political, and blasphemous."—James Tate, author of Shroud of the Gnome.
Synopsis
Always attuned to how celebrations mirror the societies that hold them and to the way they reflect shifts in power and class, this beautifully illustrated book offers a lively and illuminating history of grand eating.
Synopsis
Includes bibliographical references (p. 313-340) and index.
Synopsis
A unique and fascinating history of grand eating by one of the UK's best-known communicators.
Sharing a meal, in particular a grand one, has always been a complex social mechanism for uniting and dividing people. Such an event could signal peace, a marriage, a victory, an alliance, a coming-of-age, a coronation or a funeral. The feast was a vehicle for display and ostentation, for the parade of rank and hierarchy, for flattering and influencing people as well as providing a theatre in which to exercise the art of conversation and the display of manners.
In an age that has virtually abolished the shared meal as a central feature of daily living, Feast presents a revelatory picture of a world we have lost. Beautifully illustrated, it traces fashions in food and the etiquette of eating -- from the elegance of the Roman villa to the austerity of the monastic refectory, from the splendours of the Renaissance banquet to the rigours of the Victorian dinner party.
Synopsis
To read Tomaž Šalamun is to understand the delights of contemporary poetry. He is one of the major names in the international avant-garde. Irreverent, self-mythologizing, tragic, and visionary, he is a poet of immense range and cunning, able to encompass everything from Balkan wars and politics to the most intimate personal experiences. Feast, his latest collection in English, brings together both early and more recent work. "Realism, surrealism, song. Aphorisms, lyric, anti-lyric," as Jorie Graham wrote, are all to be found in these poems. Here is the most blasphemous of poets who is also a great religious poet. "Throw open a window, pull up a chair, and enjoy the imaginative feast" (Edward Hirsch).
About the Author
Sir Roy Strong is a highly regarded historian, columnist, critic, and broadcaster. He is the author of many books, including The Story of Britain and The Spirit of Britain, and is a regular contributor to radio and television. He lives in Herefordshire, England.