ABSTRACT
Richard Menke's reading of Rossetti's Goblin Market positions the poem historically within a time when tastes became inaccessible, even to the wealthy, after the promise of an abundant harvest. The hunger to understand, to comprehend disaster, is the most succinct expression of the human desire to moderate and control one's individual and communal sphere. The term 'moderator' designates a particularly powerful role, assigning both the power to decide what moderation is, and to impose that idea on individuals and the community. Mythical narratives of market economies persist in the human need to have a sense of control; but such control is only available to those with the social and economic luxury of moderation. The shifting ideals of entitlement and progress, read through constructions of hunger and taste, critique economic ideals of civilisation, creating counternarratives of insurrection and unrest.
