LEONARD BARKAN & CAROLINA MANGONE
THE HUNGRY EYE: EATING, DRINKING, AND EUROPEAN CULTURE FROM ROME TO THE RENAISSANCE
Tuesday 10/26 at 6:00pm
Labyrinth Books Princeton
Eating and drinking can be aesthetic as well as sensory experiences. The Hungry Eye takes readers from antiquity to the Renaissance to explore the central role of food and drink in literature, art, philosophy, religion, and statecraft. We invite you to a conversation between the author, Leonard Barkan, and Renaissance specialist Carolina Mangone.
Plato’s Symposium is a timeless philosophical text, one that also describes a drinking party. Salome performed her dance at a banquet where the head of John the Baptist was presented on a platter. Barkan looks at ancient mosaics, Dutch still life, and Venetian Last Suppers. He describes how ancient Rome was a paradise of culinary obsessives, and explains what it meant for the Israelites to dine on manna. He sheds new light on the moment when the risen Christ appears to his disciples hungry for a piece of broiled fish; and much more.
The Hungry Eye is an erudite and uniquely personal look at all the glorious ways that food and drink have transfigured Western arts and high culture.
Leonard Barkan is Professor of Comparative Literature at Princeton University. His books include Mute Poetry, Speaking Pictures; Unearthing the Past: Archaeology and Aesthetics in the Making of Renaissance Culture; and Satyr Square: A Year, a Life in Rome. Carolina Mangone is Assistant Professor of Art and Archaeology at Princeton and the author of Berninis Michelangelo.