The Origin of Table Manners
Author: Claude Lévi-Strauss
Publisher:
Published: 1978
Total Pages: 560
ISBN-13:
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The Origin of Table Manners
Author: Claude Lévi-Strauss
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 1990-11-08
Total Pages: 551
ISBN-13: 0226474933
DOWNLOAD EBOOK"The Origin of Table Manners is the third volume of a tetralogy devoted to American Indian mythology. Unlike the first two volumes (The Raw and the Cooked, From Honey to Ashes), which are devoted to South American myths, the present one establishes relations with North America, which is the subject of the fourth (The Naked Man). . . . In the course of the analysis, the myths link up with ideas of more general interest. Thus, we find discussions of numeration, of morals, and of the origin of the novel. . . . The Origin of Table Manners is thus of special interest to students of American Indian mythology, although it contains ideas of interest to other fields and even to the general reader."—Daniel C. Raffalovich, American Anthropologist "An immense anthropological erudition is here wielded by one of the world's finest minds, and the myths themselves have never been taken more seriously. . . . [Lévi-Strauss] raises issues and then resolves them with the suspenseful cunning of a mystery novelist."—John Updike, New Yorker
The Rituals of Dinner
Author: Margaret Visser
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2015-06-23
Total Pages: 373
ISBN-13: 1504011694
DOWNLOAD EBOOKA New York Times Notable Book: A renowned scholar explores the way we eat across cultures and throughout history. From the wild parties of ancient Greece to the strictures of an Upper East Side meal to the ritualistic feasts of cannibals, Margaret Visser takes us on a fascinating journey through the diverse practices, customs, and taboos that define how and why we prepare and consume food the way we do. With keen insights into small details we take for granted, such as the origins of forks and chopsticks or why tablecloths exist, and examinations of broader issues like the economic implications of dining etiquette, Visser scrutinizes table manners across eras and oceans, offering an intimate new understanding of eating both as a biological necessity and a cultural phenomenon. Witty and impeccably researched, The Rituals of Dinner is a captivating blend of folklore, sociology, history, and humor. In the words of the New York Times Book Review, “Read it, because you’ll never look at a table knife the same way again.”
The Table Comes First
Author: Adam Gopnik
Publisher: Knopf Canada
Published: 2011-10-25
Total Pages: 291
ISBN-13: 0307399036
DOWNLOAD EBOOKTransplanted Canadian, New Yorker writer and author of Paris to the Moon, Gopnik is publishing this major new work of narrative non-fiction alongside his 2011 Massey Lecture. An illuminating, beguiling tour of the morals and manners of our present food manias, in search of eating's deeper truths, asking "Where do we go from here?" Never before have so many North Americans cared so much about food. But much of our attention to it tends towards grim calculation (what protein is best? how much?); social preening ("I can always score the last reservation at xxxxx"); or graphic machismo ("watch me eat this now"). Gopnik shows we are not the first food fetishists but we are losing sight of a timeless truth, "the table comes first": what goes on around the table matters as much to life as what we put on the table: families come together (or break apart) over the table, conversations across the simplest or grandest board can change the world, pain and romance unfold around it--all this is more essential to our lives than the provenance of any zucchini or the road it travelled to reach us. Whatever dilemmas we may face as omnivores, how not what we eat ultimately defines our society. Gathering people and places drawn from a quarter century's reporting in North America and France, The Table Comes First marks the beginning a new conversation about the way we eat now.
The Rituals of Dinner
Author: Margaret Visser
Publisher: Grove Press
Published: 2025-04-22
Total Pages: 0
ISBN-13: 9780802164834
DOWNLOAD EBOOK"One of the most important books ever written about food."--Bee Wilson A New York Times Notable Book from one of our sharpest, most irresistibly witty writers, Margaret Visser's feast of fact The Rituals of Dinner is the definitive history of one of our most primal rituals: the meal The cult classic and New York Times Notable Book that solidified Margaret Visser's standing as a preeminent observer and scholar of everyday life, The Rituals of Dinner is a sweeping history of table manners, from the civilizations of ancient Greece and medieval Europe to the way that technology has altered, and continues to alter, our behavior over dinner. She writes of everything from cultural idiosyncrasies around preparation and consumption, to the surprising origins of tableware--forks took eight centuries to become common utensils, the plate began as a four-day-old slice of bread. Replete with a new foreword by British food journalist Bee Wilson, and a new introduction by the author, The Rituals of Dinner blends folklore, history, and humor in this feast of fact and observation on one of our most primal rituals: the meal. This is the book on the way we eat.
Galateo
Author: Giovanni Della Casa
Publisher:
Published: 1774
Total Pages: 224
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKMiss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior (Freshly Updated)
Author: Judith Martin
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2011-02-07
Total Pages: 859
ISBN-13: 0393079090
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAn indispensable manual to navigating life from birth to death without making a false move. Your neighbor denounces cellular telephones as instruments of the devil. Your niece swears that no one expects thank-you letters anymore. Your father-in-law insists that married women have to take their husbands' names. Your guests plead that asking them to commit themselves to attending your party ruins the spontaneity. Who is right? Miss Manners, of course. With all those amateurs issuing unauthorized etiquette pronouncements, aren't you glad that there is a gold standard to consult about what has really changed and what has not? The freshly updated version of the classic bestseller includes the latest letters, essays, and illustrations, along with the laugh-out-loud wisdom of Miss Manners as she meets the new millennium of American misbehavior head-on. This wickedly witty guide rules on the challenges brought about by our ever-evolving society, once again proving that etiquette, far from being an optional extra, is the essential currency of a civilized world.
Daily Life in Medieval Europe
Author: Jeffrey L. Forgeng
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Published: 1999-08-30
Total Pages: 289
ISBN-13: 0313007594
DOWNLOAD EBOOKExplore the Middle Ages, a complex and often misunderstood period in European history, through this vivid examination. Details of everyday living recreate the time period for modern readers, conveying the foreignness of the medieval world while bringing it into focus. The volume provides a two-pronged approach to history beginning with a broad sketch of the general dynamics that shaped the medieval experience while at the same time creating a detailed and clear portrait of what life would have been like for real individuals living in specific settings at the time. The reader is introduced to medieval society in the first three chapters, which include information on the life cycle, material culture, and the economy. These chapters provide an understanding of what people ate, what their social lives were like, what they wore, what kinds of jobs they had, and much more. Following are portraits of life in four specific medieval settings, offering in each case a particular example of the type: the village (Cuxham in Oxfordshire), the castle (Dover), the monastery (Cluny) and the town (Paris). Extensive use of documentary sources from each place sketch the broad contours of the social setting and provide details of the everyday experiences of real individuals. The volume concludes with an exploration of how ordinary people perceived the world in which they lived. Original games, recipes, and music are also provided to round out this rich introduction to life in medieval Europe.
In Pursuit of Civility
Author: Keith Thomas
Publisher: Brandeis University Press
Published: 2018-06-05
Total Pages: 378
ISBN-13: 1512602825
DOWNLOAD EBOOKKeith Thomas's earlier studies in the ethnography of early modern England, Religion and the Decline of Magic, Man and the Natural World, and The Ends of Life, were all attempts to explore beliefs, values, and social practices in the centuries from 1500 to 1800. In Pursuit of Civility continues this quest by examining what English people thought it meant to be "civilized" and how that condition differed from being "barbarous" or "savage." Thomas shows that the upper ranks of society sought to distinguish themselves from their social inferiors by distinctive ways of moving, speaking, and comporting themselves, and that the common people developed their own form of civility. The belief of the English in their superior civility shaped their relations with the Welsh, the Scots, and the Irish, and was fundamental to their dealings with the native peoples of North America, India, and Australia. Yet not everyone shared this belief in the superiority of Western civilization; the book sheds light on the origins of both anticolonialism and cultural relativism. Thomas has written an accessible history based on wide reading, abounding in fresh insights, and illustrated by many striking quotations and anecdotes from contemporary sources.
