The Rituals of Dinner: The Origins, Evolution, Eccentricities and Meaning of Table Manners

About The Rituals of Dinner: The Origins, Evolution, Eccentricities and Meaning of Table Manners

This book is a commentary on the manifold meanings of the rituals of dinner; it is about how we eat, and why we eat as we do. We insist on special places and times for eating, on specific equipment, on stylized decoration, on predictable sequence among the foods eaten, on limitation of movement, and on bodily propriety. In other words, we turn the consumption of food, a biological necessity, into a carefully cultured phenomenon. - Introduction.