CONSUMING PASSIONS: Being an Historic Inquiry, into Certain English Appetites

by Philippa Pullar ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 11, 1971

Being also a charming and at times appalling chronology of gormandizing indulgence and licentiousness fastidiously traced back to the Roman empire when pleasure then, as it would be through the ages, was divided between the distended enjoyments of food and sex. And when. after spectacles to be equally duplicated in later years (e.g., a Pepysian dinner), ""Everyone waddles home."" After the Empire falls, the mood swing of the times to follow is one of ""holy emaciation"" in the monasteries and convents of the middle ages: always from then on there will be divergent periods of puritanism and excess -- nuns will be later observed wiping their greasy hands on their garments, having plunged their sops into the gobbets in a most unhygienic fashion: and just as uncouth and malodorous practices are noted everywhere, even so far as Australia with the famous lady who was hacked into steaks by her lover. Gratification and mortification (see the illustrations, which are many and precise and include the ""electric alarum for arresting nocturnal emissions"") are all part of the long history of too much and too little, now seen equalized in the modern world which also brings with it ""death in the pot"" from pollutants and poisons. Miss Pullar has assembled many eclectic and edifying details and contained them behind a jeweled stomacher -- her prose is stylish and polished, and she has apparently searched through the recorded literature of the ages to produce a work of signal distinction.

Pub Date: May 11, 1971

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Little, Brown

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1971

Categories: NONFICTION