• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.57 no.1
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• pp.171-190
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• 2011

Shakespeare's plays deploy an interesting array of food signs in a way to illuminate the historical process of what Stephen Mennell has described as "the civilizing of appetite"-a process in which the changes of food choices and eating habits took place in response to the changes in people's way of life and personality structure over the long-term modern period since the middle ages. Shakespeare's plays suggest that the civilizing of appetite in early modern England was heavily affected by the forces of social mobility as well as the nascent market economy. The Capulets' costly preparation of Juliet's wedding banquet is a showcase of conspicuous consumption which was a structural necessity for the ruling class in Shakespeare's time. Some fifteen years later, the same kinds of foodstuffs are included in a shepherd's shopping list for the sheepshearing festival in Winter's Tale. This is a significant coincidence to prove that food was an important source of emulation and contest among different social classes; and that the rich diet of the upper class gave impetus to social mobility. The Elizabethan subjects, especially among the elite noblemen, were interpellated by the ideology of food that equated the quality of food and the eater's social identity. Faced with bankruptcy as a consequence of his extravagant consumption habit, Bassanio in The Merchant of Venice testifies to the gripping ideology of food onto early modern people, while Poor Tom in King Lear presents a comic parody of the rich people's conspicuous waste. Also in Coriolanus and The Merry Wives of Winsor, Shakespeare uses food as a metaphor for class-motivated social struggles.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.16 no.5
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• pp.463-476
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• 2016

Western countries came to Asia aggressively in the early 1900s. Westerners who came to Korea at that time also had a various jobs with diplomats, missionaries, doctors, and so on. Korean diet was curious and shocking to foreigners in the early 1990s, so they made a record of the Korean diet. They thought Korea was peaceful, attractive and rich to eat. Koreans ate mainly rice and kimchi, a variety of grains, vegetables and bibimbap. Korea had a variety of meat and fish, seaweed, and herbs(ginseng). Foreigners said Koreans were greedy for food and ate a lot. Koreans ate basically a bowl of rice(bap), a bowl of soup(kuk), kimchi, soy sauce and other dishes. If Koreans wanted to set a table in abundance, they have meat soup(kuk) with meat and additional fish like as raw fish, dried fish, and boiled or fried fish. Korean people had a jangdokdae with Ongki(Earthen jar) where soy sauce(kanjang), soybean paste(doenjang), red pepper paste(kochujang), pickles (jang-achi) have been fermented. Foreigners felt the smell of lacquer tree and kimchi hung in the air from Korean people. While they were compared it to the smell of western rim cheese burger, they said Korea was a country with nasty smell in the feet. By the records of foreigners in the early 1900s, Korean's diets and image were appeared objectively.