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Author Camporesi, Piero.

Title The land of hunger / Piero Camporesi ; translated by Tania Croft-Murray with the assistance of Claire Foley ; Italian dialect and Latin text translated by Shayne Mitchell
Published Cambridge : Polity Press ; Cambridge, MA, USA : Blackwell Publishers, 1996

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Location Call no. Vol. Availability
 W'PONDS  394.1094 Cam/Loh  UNAVAILABLE
Description 223 pages ; 24 cm
Contents Introduction: From Giant to Beggar: the Colossus and the Man of Naught -- 1. The Devil's Carnival -- 2. Charlatans, Cheats and Malingerers -- 3. The Science of the Belly: Decline and Death of the Myth of Cockaigne -- 4. The Land of Hunger -- 5. The Witches' Carnival -- 6. A Blemished World
Summary In this highly original book, Camporesi explores the two worlds of feast and famine in early modern Europe. Camporesi brings together a mosaic of images from Italian folklore: phantasmagoric processions of giants, pigs, vagabonds, down-trodden rogues, charlatans and beggars in rags. He reconstructs a world inhabited by the strange forces of peasant culture, and describes the various rituals - carnivals, festivities, competitions and funerals - in which food played a central role. Camporesi's description alternates between the lives of the 'haves' and the 'have-nots'. He moves from the starving underworld of 'criminalized poverty', where people were forced to develop the art of living at the expense of others simply in order to survive, to the gastronomic culture of the well-fed, with their excessive eating habits, oily foods and colourful table manners
Analysis Italy
Literature Special subjects Food History
Notes Includes index
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages [189]-220) and index
Notes Orig. pub. in Italian
Subject Folklore in literature.
Food in literature.
Gastronomy in literature.
Hunger in literature.
Italian literature -- History and criticism.
LC no. 95025530
ISBN 0745608884 (acid-free paper)
Other Titles Paese della fame. English