Food & Fiction: Memorable Meals in Literature | It's Lit! | PBS Digital Studios

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Food varies wildly from place to place and from culture to culture; since humans are such sensory creatures, using words to evoke the experience of eating is an excellent way to bring a text to life.

Hosted by Lindsay Ellis

Written by Angelina Meehan and Lindsay Ellis
Directed by Andrew Matthews
Animation by Dano Johnson
Fact Check by Elisa Hansen
Produced by Amanda Fox
Executive in Charge (PBS): Adam Dylewski

[tacitus]

To be fair - Turkish Delight would be pretty awesome in WW2 Britain with its sugar rationing; not so much in today's world where many are swimming in sugary treats.

[tyger]

I always feel more intelligent after watching anything Lindsay does.

[JoshuaFagan]

This is not directly related to literature, but Ghibli movies always use food so beautifully and effectively. Hearty food often helps add to the comforting ambience of a place, the childlike sense that there's wonder every you look. It is also useful in building relationships between characters- the most famous example of this is the food Haku gives to Chihiro in Spirited Away. Tantalizing food has become a huge part of Ghibli iconography, so much so that when I went to the Ghibli Museum there was a temporary exhibit about food, and it was packed.

[johnjessop]

It's PEOPLE! SCIENCE FICTION FOOD IS PEOPLE! YOU'VE GOT TO TELL THEM LINDSAY! YOU'VE GOT TO TELL THEM!

*Is dragged away for rendering*

[joeastbury]

"In a heartbeat, a thousand voices took up the chant. King Joffery and King Robb and King Stannis were forgotten, and King Bread ruled alone."

[jackielinde]

Lindsay Ellis, I'm surprised you didn't touch on Redwall's use of food. Brian Jacques wrote that when writing about food and feasts, he was influenced by the food shortages during WWII. While reading his favorite books during this period, he noted most authors tended to gloss over meals and mealtimes, relegating it to something perfunctory. The meal may have been the scene, but the food in that scene was little more than background dressing. Because of this, he decided that scenes where food was part of the story, he would make the food as much a character as the animals who acted out his stories. He even went so far as to write and publish a children's cookbook based on some of the items in the story. (I have that book for my daughter.)

[sarahtaylor]

I liked how you brought up Lembas Bread and ale from The Lord of the Rings. However, I am surprised you said nothing about the extra meals, such as Second Breakfast, that are part of typical Shire life. I personally found this aspect more memorable and conceptually interesting. One of the first questions they ask is when will they eat and having to skip meals is a chief complaint in the early part of the work. Towards the end, no one gives a second thought to it. They have more important issues to think about. The reason the Nazgul find and attack the Fellowship on Weathertop is because Merry and Pippin decide to cook after the group has been told not to light a fire. Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli perplexingly and aggravatingly find them smoking, laughing and eating in celebration of the Ent's destruction of Isengard after tracking them for days, fearing they had been killed. In the Return of the King (movie), the first thing the hobbits do when they get back is go drinking. The book and movie also place significant weight on Golemn's preference for raw food and willingness to eat goblin flesh in contrast to the hobbits' repulsion for these things. It symbolizes his transition from the hobbit Sméagol to the monster he is now. For the hobbits, food is heavily related to their journeys, identities and individual character development. For the Lord of the Rings as a whole, food is an indicator of mood and a catalyst for the plot.

[ryat]

You have to understand, in C.S. Lewis's time, candy was a LOT blander...

[aspiringpolymath]

Still loving this series, and if there's one author that loves to go off on food, it is Brian Jacques. It's not a Redwall book if there aren't a minimum two long, loving, obsessive passages describing feasts the characters attend in almost painful detail. And don't worry about when they leave the Abbey to travel and can't have feasts anymore - he'll still tell you enough about the food they eat on the road that you could probably make it yourself at home just from his descriptions. Not that I think his food passages have no point, he just also... very clearly enjoyed them.

[amydaskilewicz]

I love the way that Suzanne Collins’ describes food or how Katniss was eating

[AlyssNightingale]

Wait, did you say Pita was a bread maker’s son in the Hunger Games? .... hunger, bread maker, pita! It all comes together.

[anthonywheeler]

Lindsay Ellis is better than bread...and bread is pretty great

[emmahenderson]

That Hitchhikers quote is probably my fav ever ^^

[beckyginger]

I loved the feast scene in the Phantom Tollbooth - when everyone has to eat there words

[Lemanic]

If comics are included into literature, then Eastman/Lairds "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" commodified the pizza into the often misplaced snack among prepubescent kids it has become today, since the art of ninjutsu or any martial arts and sport for that matter requires a lot of energy to be perfected. A sports/ya/crime/scifi story.

[Patrick-plkm]

those are sweet potatoes (Ipomea batata), not the true yams (Dioscorea sp.) that Achebe wrote about :( poor yams always misrepresented

[alexisfrost]

I've become obsessed with the meaning of food in fiction, and this has been a treat to watch. Especially with me making a list of dishes based on my D&D campaign and the Player Characters.

[CrispyDragons]

I will never eat any "future food" no matter what. It looks nasty.

There's also the madeleine that keeps coming up in Proust's In Search of Lost Time. It even inspired the ending of Ratatouille.

[eleiraeel]

Not gonna lie, the way food was described in the hunger games (from the hearty bread with nuts and figs to the thin green soup that tasted like spring) always sounded AMAZING

[tecpaocelotl]

I'm glad you mentioned Like Water for Chocolate.