Imagining Food

It follows that food, being a huge part of everyday life, also has a significant presence in literature. This week, NPR's Picture Show posted an article about Dinah Fried's series of photographs, in which the artist photographs meals created based on the literary descriptions in classic literature.

Like this representation of the Mad Hatter's Tea Party from Alice in Wonderland...

Or this envisioning of a meal from To Kill a Mockingbird.



I like these photographs because they offer a new way to put yourself into the shoes of the character. They are photographed about as they would look if you were the one sitting at the table, prepared to eat the meal. They give you a tangible image of the setting in which you find yourself, and one can imagine looking up and around seeing the rest of the scene laid before your eyes in vivid detail.

This series also made me reflect on the role that food plays in literature. Sensory details play an important role in the description of any setting, however taste is not always applicable. Though sight, sound, smell, and touch are always applicable, taste is not. In spite of this, the description of meals adds greatly to the reader's understanding of the character of a place. For example, in the Harry Potter series, Harry eats stale bread, cheese, and soup, and is always hungry. Part of what creates your understanding of Hogwarts as Harry's true home, and infinitely better place, is that there are tables laden with good food every day, frequent feasts, and a variety of delicious, magical things to try. Appropriate use of food culture can bring the reader into the story just as much as dialect can.

So, cheesy Participation Question of the Day- if you were going to photograph a food scene from a book, which one would it be?