How can we define feasts in general? What do they include? Will we know one when we see or eat during one? While some actual food-related occasions may seem crazy to cultural strangers – like downhill cheese rolling races in England, or Italian street fests with hordes of semi-nude people pelting each other with overripe tomatoes – at least we understand that food is being honored in a backhanded way. But our interests here will be focused on more edible non-movable (or only slightly movable) feasting: as when the food moves mostly from plate to mouth while the eater stays put.
So what is a feast? To titillate the literati among readers, a dictionary-type definition can be hazarded for starters. For example, one could say: a feast is a dramatic culinary-centered social occasion which fulfills the hosts’ explicit and implicit goals through a ritualized dramatic commensal celebration. After checking dictionaries and crafting this formal definition for the pedantic among us, we can move on to more congenial approaches. Give me a break! I’m a Cultural Anthropologist much given to classifications and definitions only some of which resemble reality.
We tend to think of feasts as huge affairs, but not all feasts involve a cast of hundreds gorging on fifty-plus courses. Any feast, even a crazy one, can be a small, even intimate meal with few courses; however, most dinners of this genre reek of an erotic aura and intent. And craziness happens during them too. Consider the intimate feast a man hosts to make his marriage proposal, but before he can stutter the question, his intended swallows the engagement ring cleverly hidden in the chocolate mousse. I believe a movie once hinged on this contretemps. Anyway, the fact that many religious rites, paintings, novels, plays, movies and operas create or depict plots that center on feasts suggests they are important value-laden situations. A certain amount of acting-out is embedded in the staging of banquets or feasts. Dramatic tension rises as increasingly complex dishes are presented for audience-guest appreciation, until even the hosts become nervy or intoxicated.
Feasts often become occasions for important plot actions to occur in life, as well as in art. We don’t need to read Jane Austen to prove this, although she dramatized the awful symmetry of ruined lives that can result from a faux pas or improper class-defined interaction during banquets and balls. And scores of British mysteries turn on plots featuring country weekend dinners during or after which one or more guests are murdered, even before the inevitable fox hunt!
And what about that celebrated Last Supper, after which the disciple-guests quarreled about who said what during their Spartan meal until they exploded into different ontologies and sects? Indeed, some hangers-on still seek Jesus’ humble goblet as a sacred totem, although He would probably think that fetish foolishness. The menu for that banquet was more than lean, but the plot ended in a sacrificial death that challenged disciple-guests to create the greatest of all Mysteries: endless ritualized agapé love feasts. Then, since theologians can never leave well enough alone, they changed the meal-cum-ritual-Mass to include the transmogrification of bread and wine into God-as-Host Himself! That crazy magic was aimed to stimulate thought and fright, as well it might!
You might eschew these comments as merely cheeky, but it is notable that The Last Supper is a scene often painted by artists to deepen believers’ bonds of faith. The craziness happened after that ritual feast, when friendly believers split into separate sects. But for now, let us dodge the wanderlust of theology, and simply note that even well intentioned serious feasts can serve craziness instead of dessert.
To be honest, history suggests that most hosts sponsor feasts to enhance their own status, and/or to bind their guests into tighter economic, religious or social relationships. In other words, traditional feasts often performed the same basic function as contemporary ‘let’s-have-lunch’ business occasions do today. To gain such ego-serving ends, justifiable or not, huge expenditures and much labor are often dispensed to sponsor aggrandizing feasts. Ever been to a museum or political fund-raiser? Most charge hundreds of dollars for tasteless chicken entrées, mediocre wine, and being forced to listen to one or another party line for dessert. No good crazy feast goes unpunished.
In view of their rather obvious goals, one must admit that the great feasts of history were seldom simple affairs. Indeed, hosts often sponsored feasts with calculated byzantine goals only known to themselves and perhaps a trusted Chef. But if hosts of any era want a banquet to be impressive, it follows that the menu, the visual presentation of dishes, the environmental ambiance, and the entertainments must be orchestrated to instill the desired memories for guests to rave about. All the senses should be exercised and well sated. That summary helps explain why royal or noble patrons often ordered their famous indentured artists to create elaborate environments with visual and mechanical aids to amaze guests. Imagine asking Leonardo da Vinci to play his handmade lute and sing ex tempore after dinner; or demanding that Michelangelo create a snow sculpture as an after-dinner dessert, during a rare Florentine snowfall! But these requests actually happened!
And there were festal occasions - like the marriage feast of Henry II of France to Catherine de Medici (1549) - that featured an actual bull fight and siege against a fake castle built for the occasion. Even the Pope bristled at that feast, since it was held during Lent. In earlier days, wealthy Agostino Chigo had a mechanical device built that sent his guests’ dining utensils (often silver or gold) flying into the Tiber River where they were hopefully caught in nets by servants! Entertainments can definitely help make a feast crazy.
But again, not one of these motivations or presentations necessarily makes a feast crazy. Craziness can happen because of bad planning, or also because of the feckless play of sheer accidents. The innocent transformation of a normal into a crazy feast can result in humorous satire, or a tragic perversion of the host’s original intentions. While this isn’t a plan to make thinking about feasts into projective tests, you might play around with that idea for your own crazy feast. I can see it now: huge inkblots pinned to walls, or oddly shaped plates with wandering designs of darkly tinted mashed potatoes….
Feasts resemble the drama of theater in many ways. They have a cast of characters that performs in a staged setting, as well as a beginning, middle and end defined typically as courses. Some feasts offer background music, toasts or speeches, and as many roles or guests needed to enact the host’s plot. Feasts involve ‘costumed’ characters and actions staged by the host who directs his caste of diners in their dual roles as players and audience. Feasts resemble theater-in-the-round. They involve directors (hosts), producers (cooks), plots (menus and courses), staged settings (dining rooms), costumes (party gear), dialogues (glorified gossip), and sometimes turn on denouements with erotic by-play (won’t go there).
Culinary history is rich with descriptions of grandiose banquets sponsored by royals or infamous popes. Some even feature dark plots, poison-laden dishes, and deadly thrusts to gain coveted power. Indeed, the lust for canonization flavored many lubricious sauces served with dubious entrées during Renaissance cavorting. Erotica were normally saved for other festal occasions, but not always.
Gaining power through feasting is well-known to include enough sensory gratification to flavor future memories. Finally, like the classic definition of literary plots that end with denouements, placated guests become both critics and memory-banks. After studying many historical banquet menus, one wonders why more guests didn’t become ill from over-indulgence. At least one can better understand why gout figured so prominently in classic Victorian plots.
A peek into the connivances of pre-feast hosts and guests is a peek into their hearts and minds if not their souls. Cookbooks, caterers or chefs are consulted to set menus. Guest lists are studied with finicky care and social acumen. Closets or favorite shops are ransacked for the latest fashions and gossip about other potential guests. Turning over the responsibilities and drudgery of hosting to caterers or chefs can be desirable, and was often done during servant-laden times. Only rich oddballs like Talleyrand, the famous French foodie statesman, employed many cooks, but still hung around his kitchen so much his staff became almost suicidal.
Famous European Chefs were honored and took their work seriously. They were paid well, especially if they agreed to cross the Channel from France or Italy to England. In fact, during those days of