Nom nom nomoi : food, identity, and shared custom in Herodotus’ Histories
department or school: Arts, Faculty of
department or school: Classical, Near Eastern and Religious Studies, Department of
data provider: DSpace
degree campus: UBCV
creator: Hutt, Molly B.
issued: 2017-08-30T23:12:23Z
issued: 2017
related degree: Master of Arts - MA
degree grantor: University of British Columbia
description: Herodotus attributed much significance to the subjects of food and foodways. With the possible exception of death-related rituals, foodways are the only genre of custom that Herodotus covers in substantial detail for every society which he describes at length, and they are an important component of ethnicity and identity in both his explicitly ethnographical logoi and his narrative generally. The two most well-known sources on food and identity in Herodotus, François Hartog’s Le miroir d’Hérodote (1980, English 1988) and Brent Shaw’s “Eaters of Flesh, Drinkers of Milk” (1982) take Herodotus’ discussion of food as a method of “Othering,” a “mirror” through which Herodotus’ Greek readers could see themselves by comparison to outlandish, often fabricated, descriptions. However, Herodotus’ food passages reflect, at least to some extent, a reality which Herodotus clearly thought it important to relate, so to dismiss them as simply one more act of literary “Othering” is insufficient. Previous studies have tended to focus entirely on one culture, usually Scythian, sometimes Perisan, and rarely Egyptian, whose foodways generally appear only in broader studies of Herodotus’ Egyptian logos. Because of these limitations, and the fact that the scholarly community seemed to consider the problem of food in Herodotus “solved” after Hartog and Shaw (and thus no longer worthy of continuing research), the topic merits renewed investigation. Through a look at all three cultures, I show that Herodotus’ discussion of food is part of a larger scheme of humanizing barbarians, an addition of a biological universal to which any reader/listener could relate. In Herodotus’ discourse on food, the barbarian is not presented exclusively as an “Other” but also made more relatable to the Greek audience, complicating the relationship between “us” and “them.” Ultimately Herodotus shows his audience that barbarians, and especially Persians, share more in common with Greeks in terms of foodways than h…
aggregated CHO: https://circle.library.ubc.ca/rest/handle/2429/62901
note: NOM NOM NOMOI: FOOD, IDENTITY, AND SHARED CUSTOM IN HERODOTUS’ HISTORIES by MOLLY B. HUTT A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS in The Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies (Ancient Culture, Religion, and Ethnicity) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) August 2017 © Molly B. Hutt, 2017 ii Abstract Herodotus attributed much significance to the subjects of food and foodways. With the possible exception of death-related rituals, foodways are the only genre of custom that Herodotus covers in substantial detail for every society which he describes at length, and they are an important component of ethnicity and identity in both his explicitly ethnographical logoi and his narrative generally. The two most well-known sources on food and identity in Herodotus, François Hartog’s Le miroir d’Hérodote (1980, English 1988) and Brent Shaw’s “Eaters of Flesh, Drinkers of Milk” (1982) take Herodotus’ discussion of food as a method of “Othering,” a “mirror” through which Herodotus’ Greek readers could see themselves by comparison to outlandish, often fabricated, descriptions. However, Herodotus’ food passages reflect, at least to some extent, a reality which Herodotus clearly thought it important to relate, so to dismiss them as simply one more act of literary “Othering” is insufficient. Previous studies have tended to focus entirely on one culture, usually Scythian, sometimes Perisan, and rarely Egyptian, whose foodways generally appear only in broader studies of Herodotus’ Egyptian logos. Because of these limitations, and the fact that the scholarly community seemed to consider the problem of food in Herodotus “solved” after Hartog and Shaw (and thus no longer worthy of continuing research), the topic merits renewed investigation. Through a look at all three cultures, I show that Herodotus’ discussion of food is part of a larger scheme of humanizing barbarians, an addition of a biological universal to which …
has type: Thesis/Dissertation
date issued: 2017-11
is shown at: 10.14288/1.0355211
language: eng
degree discipline: Ancient Culture, Religion and Ethnicity
provider: Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
publisher: University of British Columbia
rights: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
rights URI: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
scholar level: Graduate
type: Text
identifier URI: http://hdl.handle.net/2429/62901