ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book aims to provide relationships between cultures of food and major literary forms: tragedy, utopianism, satire, and modernist fiction. It examines frameworks central to food studies and those important to literary studies, while often showing that the two overlap in their intellectual concerns and curiosities. The book highlights a cross-disciplinary network of scholars who have helped to establish food studies and its particular purchase for students and scholars of literature. It addresses at length parallel traditions of writing about feasting versus hunger—traditions important to considerations of race, class, gender, and power within food studies. The book focuses on the early modern period in "Recipes as vernacular literature," which considers the Aztec, Spanish, and North American sources of chocolate recipes.
