Food and Feast in Modern Outlaw Tales
This collection of scholarly essays presents new work from an emerging line of inquiry: modern outlaw narratives and the textual and cultural relevance of food and feasting. Food, its preparation and its consumption, is presented in outlaw narratives as central points of human interaction, community, conflict, and fellowship. Feast scenes perform a wide variety of functions, serving as cultural repositories of manners and behaviors, catalysts for adventure, or moments of regrouping and redirecting narratives. The book argues that modern outlaw narratives illuminate a potent cross-cultural need for freedom, solidarity, and justice, and it examines ways in which food and feasting are often used to legitimate difference, create discord, and manipulate power dynamics.
Alexander L. Kaufman is the Reed D. Voran Distinguished Professor of Humanities and Professor of English at Ball State University, where he teaches in the Honors College.
Penny Vlagopoulos is Assistant Professor of English at St. Lawrence University.