Food in the Arts: Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery 1998. Edited by Harlan Walker. This Symposium was held in September 1998 at Saint Antony's College, Oxford. There are 27 papers in this volumn including: "Food in the Detective Novel," "Memorable Food Moments in American Film," "The Cook as Artist?," "The Food of the 'Arabian Nights'," "Food in Medieval Drama," "Gastronomy in the Still-Life Paintings of Luis Melendez," and "Depictions of the Last supper." Prospect Books, Devon. Paper. © 1999. 240 pages. $44.00
The Gardens of Adonis: Spices in Greek Mythology. Second Edition. M. Detienne and J. Lloyd., Trans. Rich with implications for the history of sexuality, gender issues, and patterns of Hellenic literary imagining, Marcel Detienne's landmark book recasts long-standing ideas about the fertility myth of Adonis. The author challenges Sir James Frazer's thesis that the vegetation god Adonis – whose premature death was mourned by women and whose resurrection marked a joyous occasion – represented the annual cycle of growth and decay in agriculture. Using the analytic tools of structuralism, Detienne shows instead that the festivals of Adonis depict a seductive but impotent and fruitless deity – whose physical ineptitude led to his death in a boar hunt, after which his body was found in a lettuce patch. Contrasting the festivals of Adonis with the solemn ones dedicated to Demeter, the goddess of grain, he reveals the former as a parody and negation of the institution of marriage. * Detienne considers the short-lived gardens that Athenian women planted in mockery for Adonis's festival, and explores the function of such vegetal matter as spices, mint, myrrh, cereal, and wet plants in religious practice and in a wide selection of myths. His inquiry exposes, among many things, attitudes toward sexual activities ranging from "perverse" acts to marital relations. Princeton University Press. 1994, Paper. 256 pages. $17.95
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Images are from Lycos Free Gallery. texts -- later.