The land of hunger
By: Piero Camporesi ; translated by Tania Croft-Murray with the assistance of Claire Foley ; Italian dialect and Latin text translated by Shayne Mitchell.
Publisher: Polity Press; Blackwell Publishers
Published: 1996
Place of publication: Cambridge; Cambridge, MA, USA
Language: eng
Number of pages: 223
Subjects: Italian literature -- History and criticism.; Gastronomy in literature.; Folklore in literature.; Hunger in literature.; Food in literature.
Description: 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.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [189]-220) and index.