{"title":"“Of spicerie of leef, and bark, and roote”: Recombinative Materiality in the <i>Pardoner’s Prologue</i> and <i>Tale</i>","authors":"Rebecca Davis","doi":"10.1080/10412573.2023.2224154","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Geoffrey Chaucer’s Pardoner’s Prologue and Tale offers a rich case study of the dynamic materiality of food and its relation to literary practice. A particularly complex version of what Jane Bennett describes as “edible matter,” spices challenge our assumptions about material passivity, both because of their well-documented allure and because of their charismatic but finally insubstantial quality as a foodstuff. Typically ground, sieved, and combined with other ingredients in such a way that their tangible material substance virtually disappeared, their presence was known only by the traces of flavor, aroma, and color that they imparted. Spices thus model a recombinative materiality that was attractive to Chaucer precisely because spice can do what rhetorical and literary language can do: it can color, it can add flavor, it can obscure, it can augment, it can make one thing appear to be another thing.","PeriodicalId":43692,"journal":{"name":"Exemplaria-Medieval Early Modern Theory","volume":"36 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5000,"publicationDate":"2023-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Exemplaria-Medieval Early Modern Theory","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10412573.2023.2224154","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"MEDIEVAL & RENAISSANCE STUDIES","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Geoffrey Chaucer’s Pardoner’s Prologue and Tale offers a rich case study of the dynamic materiality of food and its relation to literary practice. A particularly complex version of what Jane Bennett describes as “edible matter,” spices challenge our assumptions about material passivity, both because of their well-documented allure and because of their charismatic but finally insubstantial quality as a foodstuff. Typically ground, sieved, and combined with other ingredients in such a way that their tangible material substance virtually disappeared, their presence was known only by the traces of flavor, aroma, and color that they imparted. Spices thus model a recombinative materiality that was attractive to Chaucer precisely because spice can do what rhetorical and literary language can do: it can color, it can add flavor, it can obscure, it can augment, it can make one thing appear to be another thing.
期刊介绍：
The first issue of Exemplaria, with an article by Jacques Le Goff, was published in 1989. Since then the journal has established itself as one of the most consistently interesting and challenging periodicals devoted to Medieval and Renaissance studies. Providing a forum for different terminologies and different approaches, it has included symposia and special issues on teaching Chaucer, women, history and literature, rhetoric, medieval noise, and Jewish medieval studies and literary theory. The Times Literary Supplement recently included a review of Exemplaria and said that "it breaks into new territory, while never compromising on scholarly quality".
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