ABSTRACT
The metaphorical manoeuvre that conceives reading as eating takes something immaterial and makes it material. Macaronic writing owes its name to a rustic dish made with mixed ingredients. In pursuing the question, and especially in considering what a macaronic book might be like, the poetry of John Skelton proves a challenging but instructive example. There are good reasons to prefer a printed Skelton that just passes on the problem of its macaronic nature. Skelton, Thomas Nashe, and Thomas Coryate represent a century of English interactions between macaronic literature and the printed book. Skelton has a fate unlike the others, and there may be reasons for this: his special position in early Tudor learned and courtly culture, and the way in which this intersected with the practices of printers. His textual voice incorporates multilingual rhetoric and a scornful attitude towards anyone lacking in the highest degree of learning.
