Dante’s Gluttons: Food and Society from the Convivio to the Comedy

Dante’s Gluttons: Food and Society from the Convivio to the Comedy explores how the medieval Italian poet Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) uses food to express and condition the social, political, and cultural values of his time. Combining medieval history, food studies, and literary criticism, Dante’s Gluttons historicizes food and eating in Dante, beginning in his earliest collected poetry and arriving at the end of his major work. For Dante, the consumption of food is not a frivolity, but a crux of life, and gluttony is the abdication of civic and spiritual responsibility and a danger to both the individual body and soul, as well as the greater collective. This book establishes how one of the world’s preeminent authors uses the intimacy and universality of food as a touchstone, forging a community bound by a gastronomic language rooted in the deeply human relationship with material sustenance.

Danielle Callegari is Assistant Professor in the Department of French and Italian at Dartmouth College and Councilor of the Dante Society of America. Her teaching and research focuses on premodern Italian literature and food and wine studies. She has published on a variety of subjects including Dante, medieval food and wine culture, early modern women’s writing and religion, and modern Italian food and politics.