The rituals of dinner : the origins, evolution, eccentricities, and meaning of table manners

The author of the beloved __Much Depends on Dinner__ turns her acute eye and irresistable wit from the foods we eat to the way in which we eat them. __The Rituals of Dinner__ explores our revealing, colourful, and complex world at the table, illuminating the spread with examples from formal dinners to picnics, from cannibalism to the Eucharist, and from the sublime to the ridiculous--depending on where you sit. When we eat together, we bring our culture with us. Throughout history, table manners have been one way of domesticating some of the wilder aspects of human behaviour. In showing us why we act as we do, Margaret Visser provides insight into how we handle that mightiest of necessities--dining--and its most potent symbols. This is the book on the way we eat. Solidifying her standing as a preeminent observer and scholar of everyday life, Margaret Visser takes on the 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 behaviour 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. Blending folklore, history, and humour, this is a feast of fact and observation on one of our most primal rituals: the meal. Explores the history of eating rituals and table etiquette