Abstract
This chapter considers Hardy’s use of food and the occasion of eating as a means of delineating and exploring ‘character’ and ‘environment’ in The Mayor of Casterbridge. The novel is set at a moment in the nineteenth century when calls for the Repeal of the Corn Laws (1846) threatened the foundations of a society steeped in superstition and rural folklore. Mythological and metaphorical contextualisation of food in the novel will show how historical and ancestral traditions are displaced by modernity. Corn, furmity and Wide-Oh’s stew will occupy the main discussion while occasions of eating such as the Mayor’s dinner at the King’s Arms will support the argument that food co-ordinates thematic strands in the novel as well as linking varying critical approaches.
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Salmons, K. (2017). The Decline and Fall of the Corn King: The Mayor of Casterbridge . In: Food in the Novels of Thomas Hardy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63471-5_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63471-5_4
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