The plate began as a four-day-old slice of bread. The fork took eight centuries to become a common utensil. If you have ever wondered how the rituals governing the way we eat came to be, Margaret Visser’s landmark work is the place to start. Blending folklore, history and humour, she traces the sweeping arc of table manners from the civilizations of ancient Greece and medieval Europe through to the ways in which technology has altered — and continues to alter — our behaviour at the dinner table. Visser writes of cultural idiosyncrasies around food preparation and consumption, of the surprising origins of everyday tableware, and of the deeper meanings encoded in one of our most primal shared rituals: the meal. A feast of fact and observation that cements her standing as a preeminent scholar and observer of everyday life, this is quite simply the book on the way we eat.
ISBN 13: 9780241293645
Author: Margaret Visser
