The fury of men's gullets
Subtitle: Ben Jonson and the digestive canal
By: Bruce Thomas Boehrer.
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Published: 1997
Place of publication: Philadelphia
Language: eng
Number of pages: 238
Subjects: Jonson, Ben, 1573?-1637 -- Knowledge -- Anatomy; Jonson, Ben, 1573?-1637 -- Knowledge -- Manners and customs; Body, Human, in literature; Literature and society -- England -- History -- 17th century; Literature and science -- England -- History -- 17th century; Dinners and dining in literature; Alimentary canal in literature; Food habits in literature; Gastronomy in literature; Digestion in literature; Food in literature
Description: Throughout his work, Ben Jonson referred to writing in terms of ingestion, digestion, and excretion, mimicking the functions of the digestive tract. In The Fury of Men's Gullets, Bruce Boehrer explores the poet's fascination with alimentary matters and the way in which such references describe Jonson's personal and cultural transformation.

Drawing on the theoretical work of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, the author studies the alimentary and convivial language in Jonson's work. He suggests that these pervasive metaphors provided the poet with a vocabulary for addressing issues of patronage and friendship, literary production and consumption, and social inclusion and exclusion.

In his wide-ranging examination of Jonson's plays, prose, and nondramatic verse, Boehrer discusses the sociohistorical significance of food, the politics of conspicuous consumption, the infrastructure of Jacobean London, and pertinent aspects of Renaissance medical practice and physiological theory. The Fury of Men's Gullets uniquely interprets Jonson's construction of early modern English literary sensibility.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [223]-233 and index.