Knives Out: Medieval Recipes, Culinary Violence, and Literary Character
This Friday Lunch talk will explore how the inherent violence of premodern culinary technique left its traces not only in the recipes of late medieval England, but also in its imaginative poetry. First looking closely at the textural experience produced by several paradigmatic medieval recipes—an experience tied to, if not always identical with, the textures of the foods in question—Professor Cooper will then show how their violent culinary poetics, itself reflective of actual practice, extends beyond the kitchen to inform the shaping of medieval literary character, with particular attention to some notable figures in the poetry of Geoffrey Chaucer. Content warning: This talk will touch upon violence done to both animals and humans as well as medieval antisemitism.
Please note: A catered lunch will be provided at this Friday Lunch event. Seats are limited and available on a first-come basis. To register, please send an email to rsvp@humanities.wisc.edu with your name, title, or affiliation.
Lisa H. Cooper is Professor of English and Director of Medieval Studies at UW-Madison, where she specializes in the literature and culture of late medieval England; she is especially interested in the intertwined histories of labor, technology, science, material culture, and the practices of daily life from the twelfth through fifteenth centuries. Currently a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Research in the Humanities (2023-27), she is the author of Artisans and Narrative Craft in Late Medieval England (2011) and the co-editor of Lydgate Matters: Poetry and Material Culture in the Fifteenth Century (2008) and The Arma Christi in Medieval and Early Modern Material Culture (2014), and she is currently completing a book provisionally entitled The Poetics of Practicality in Late Medieval England.