Food Glorious Food

By Alice Bennett 

York Food and Drink Festival is a city-wide culinary celebration running from 22nd September to 1st October 2017. Markets and events provide opportunities to meet producers and taste new things. We ask that you’re careful consuming food and drink in the library, but we do have some tasty treats hidden away in the collections…

In this blog post we consider some icons of fictional food.

Would Proust have remembered so much without his madeleine? What would James have been without his Giant Peach? And how would the Famous Five have coped without lashings of Ginger Beer?

Food and drink play a part in many famous moments in fiction. This pivotal role of food in fiction starts in childhood. Fairy tale food often takes a sinister twist. Even something as familiar as porridge, the homely favourite of the Three Bears, can become monstrous, flooding a town in the misuse of the magic porridge pot. Seemingly innocuous food moments in fairy tales can become contentious - an edition of Little Red Riding Hood was banned in one US county, as an illustration of Red Riding Hood taking food and drink to her mother showed a bottle of wine in her basket, which was deemed unsuitable for a children’s book. In many stories, food can be used as temptation. Poison can lurk in apparently wholesome items, with Snow White tricked by the apparently perfect apple.

 Franz Jüttner Illustration from Sneewittchen Mainz (Snow White) 1905

Another traditional example is the sugary temptation of the gingerbread cottage used to lure in Hansel and Gretel. CS Lewis also resorted to confectionery temptation in Narnia, when the White Witch entraps Edmund with enchanted Turkish Delight. 

Ludwig Richter illustration,  'Hänsel und Gretel vor dem Hexenhaus' (Hansel and Gretel before the witches house) 1903

 

The inclusion of food in children’s literature is common. This can be fantastically oversized - from Jack’s magical beanstalk to the Giant Peach, which transports James and his insect friends away from his cruel aunts. Food can be used to demonstrate exoticism and plenty. The feasts at Hogwarts in the Harry Potter series create opulent images of abundance, as well as illustrating the difference of the wizarding world through mysterious treats such as Butterbeer, Chocolate Frogs and Bertie Bott’s Every Flavour Beans. Sweet foods seem to be particularly popular as images of treats and plenty, but can turn sour in excess. The Chocolate Factory that is Willy Wonka’s playground has a distinctly sinister side, whilst Bruce Bogtrotter faces punishment through cake - although not quite death by chocolate. Bizarre food items can illustrate the magical or outlandish, whilst others have an almost universal appeal - Charlie Bucket is effectively the archetypal kid in a sweet shop.

Some of the most famous literary food appears in Alice in Wonderland. The size-changing  cake and potion labelled “eat me” and “drink me” add to the strangeness of Wonderland, as well as driving the plot, whilst the Mad Hatter’s tea party is one of Carroll’s most memorable scenes. Alice’s adventures through Wonderland and through the Looking-glass are interlaced with food moments, including the sneeze-inducing pepper, the oysters devoured by the Walrus and the Carpenter and that most curious insect, the bread-and-butterfly. 

 The Mad Hatters tea party in Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll.

Carroll is by no means the only canonical writer to employ food to drive his plot. One of Shakespeare’s most gruesome scenes is that in which the avenging Titus Andronicus serves pies to Tamora, queen of the Goths - pies in which her own murderous sons are baked. Less disturbing is Robert Louis Stevenson’s use of food in conjuring memories of home as the marooned Ben Gunn dreams of toasted cheese from the Treasure Island. The role of food as a social indicator makes it a useful tool for the author, easily denoting class and status through an individual’s diet. Dickens makes great use of this, from the malnourished Oliver Twist’s request for more gruel in the workhouse to the poor but respectable Cratchit family, as they sit down to Christmas dinner.

Food continues to provide the basis of memorable scenes - one of the most notorious examples in recent fiction is that pie, in the novel The Help (and the subsequent film adaptation). Fictional foods can horrify, amuse, tempt or enchant us - and continue to do so today.

Feeling peckish? Feast on these delights from the library:

Lewis Carroll - Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-glass and What Alice Found There MA 173.1

Roald Dahl, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, novel in the Peggy Janiurek Collection

Roald Dahl, Matilda, novel available at  MA 193.9 DAH

Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol - editions of the novel at MA 163.4  

Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist, editions of the novel at MA 163.4

Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, Tales of the Brothers Grimm, editions available at MG 124.4

C. S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, novel at MA 198.9 MIT, BBC TV adaptation in the audiovisual collection at LP 4.50942 CHR

Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past, at MJ 138.2

J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter novels, available in the  Peggy Janiurek Collection

William Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus, editions of the play at  MA 102.71 TIT, DVDs of film adaptations in the audiovisual collection at MA 102.71 TIT

Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island, editions of the novel at MA 173.3

Kathryn Stockett’s The Help, film adaptation available in the audiovisual collection at LP 4.30973 TAY

Banned Books Week

Alice Bennett explores censorship and banned books with a look at controversial items held in the Minster Library.

---

September 25th 2016 marked the start of this year's Banned Books Week, an annual event organised by the American Library Association (ALA) which aims to highlight the issue of censorship and celebrate the freedom to read. The event has developed in response to the ALA log of challenges an complaints made about books held in the libraries of their members, including decisions to withdraw certain books from circulation. Although American in outlook, Banned Books Week serves as an international reminder of literary censorship, which remains an important topic today.

York Minster Library’s 1793 printing of
'The Trial of Thomas Paine' 1

Free political speech is still a right denied to many across the globe. Historically, the printing of anti-government or anti-monarchy works in Britain could be termed an act of sedition - intended to spark the overthrow of the established order and a criminal offence. The political writer, theorist and campaigner Thomas Paine faced prosecution for his work. York Minster Library holds a copy of The trial of Thomas Paine, for certain false, wicked, scandalous and seditious libels inserted in the second part of the Rights of Man, before the Rt. Hon. Lord Kenyon and a special jury, at Guildhall, on Tuesday the 18th December, 1792. Revolutionary ideas such as his were dangerous and their publication and dissemination was treated as a serious offence. His work was banned in Britain for a period following the French Revolution, for fear of inciting similar revolt in the UK. The Rights of Man was also banned following the Decemberist Revolt in Tsarist Russia, over forty years after initial publication.

A 1940 edition of Of Mice and Men 2

Away from the historic tracts and pamphlets, the literature collection of a cathedral library such as York Minster might not be an obvious place to look for contentious works. However, the number of works now considered classics which have been banned may surprise you - maybe more surprising is how recently bans or attempts to suppress works have been made. John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men is a depiction of migrant workers during the Great Depression which is now celebrated as a literary classic and is a staple of the school literature syllabus in both the UK and the US. First published in 1937, Of Mice and Men has been subject to bans in Ireland and in various counties across different states in America. The ALA records it as one of the most complained about books. Whilst most of the objections concern the language used by characters in the novel, others have included fears that the book might reflect Steinbeck's "anti business attitude" (in 1989) and because it contained "morbid and depressing themes" (in 1992). In 2002, Of Mice and Men was banned in schools in George County, Mississippi on account of "profanity".

Alice conversing with the Cheshire Cat 3

More remarkable are the complaints and bans which have been made against books most would consider utterly inoffensive. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was for a time banned in China. In 1931, the censor decided that the talking animals were raised to the level of humans, which was both insulting and a potential source of confusion for children.

For the ALA, the majority of these challenges to books come from libraries in educational institutions, particularly high schools. A common trend is the parents of students pressurising library and teaching staff to remove various books from the library and the syllabus. Reasons for objecting range from feeling the book is inappropriate for the age group, to the use of swearing, or the inclusion of sexual content. Another common theme is for objections made on religious grounds, both in educational and public libraries.

Religious belief and censorship have a long and uneasy past, reflected in the wide collections of York Minster. York Minster Archives hold a Wycliffite Bible - a rare copy of the New Testament in English, produced before full translations from Latin were sanctioned in Britain. Its rarity is in part due to the fact that any such texts discovered by the authorities were burned. York Minster Library holds a multitude of editions of the Bible, with authorised editions produced by Church and State in conjunction and officially issued to churches. Probably the most famous of these translations is the King James Bible, issued as the authorised Bible for Church of England use in 1611 and remaining a popular and influential translation today.

1611 edition of the King James Bible 4

Religious restrictions on literature are still common in many parts of the world. The Diary of Anne Frank is banned in Lebanon for the positive depiction of Jews. Copies of the Bible remain forbidden in North Korea. In 2013, Russia issued a controversial ban on a new edition of the Quran, which was deemed 'extremist' and from 2015 have also banned the import of publications of any Jehovah's Witness religious material, including an edition of the Bible.

This serves as an important reminder of the ongoing issues of literary censorship. Artists, writers and journalists have been imprisoned this year in Egypt, Iran and Singapore. But not just the authors are at risk - those who work in libraries can also face punishment for maintaining intellectual freedom for their library users. Ukrainian librarian Natalya Sharina has been under house arrest since October 2015, imposed by Russian authorities for introducing supposedly extremist Ukrainian literature to the library. The campaign for her release is ongoing.

Thankfully, the novels highlighted by Banned Books Week are easily accessed in the UK today. We face fewer challenges to library content than our colleagues in the US. Here, literary censorship is largely a thing of the past. But Banned Books Week serves as an important reminder of the historic role of censorship and the high price for free speech still being paid by so many around the world today.

---

Further detail of the images:

1. Title page of York Minster Library’s 1793 printing of The Trial of Thomas Paine for certain false, wicked, scandalous and seditious libels, inserted in the second part of the Rights of Man. For many, his political ideas were as contentious as the supposed libels.

 2. A 1940 edition of Of Mice and Men, which once belonged to Archbishop Garbett. This work is one of the most complained about novels of the twentieth century.

3. The classic John Tenniel illustration of Alice conversing with the Cheshire Cat - talking with animals being something which angered some Chinese censors. This image is of a 1925 Macmillan edition.

4. The title page of a 1611 edition of the King James Bible, one of many attempts to officially control translation and dissemination of Holy texts.

It’s 'Banned Books Week' in the USA!

Each year, the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom documents hundreds of attempts by individuals and groups to have books removed from libraries and classrooms. September 21–27 is the official week when these books are celebrated in the United States.

Banned Books Week banner showing 99 of the 100 most banned books for 1990-2000. Image courtesy of
Dayton Metro Library, re-used under a Creative Commons licence. Can you tell which is the missing 100th book?

According to a recent article in TIME magazine, part of the reason why book banning remains so prevalent in the U.S. is that “the challenges to books happen mostly on a local level. The federal government stays out of it, but individual schools and libraries are ... eager to protect everybody from hazards like ugly words, sedition, blasphemy, unwelcome ideas and, perhaps worst of all, reality.”

The ALA publishes a list of all the complaints they receive and if you can name an author, chances are they're on it: from F. Scott Fitzgerald, Philip Pullman and children's author Judy Blume, to JK Rowling (several times), John Steinbeck and Stephen King.

Here are a few of the most well-known titles on their ‘challenged classics’ list. How many of these have you read?

The Catcher in the Rye JD Salinger
The subject of multiple attempts at banning and censorship, it’s been removed from various libraries and curricula for reasons such as “excess vulgar language, sexual scenes, things concerning moral issues, excessive violence, and anything dealing with the occult”. But my favourite reason was from a submission by Libby, MT, High School in 1983 who wanted it banned “due to the book's contents."

To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee
According to Vernon Verona Sherill, NY School District in 1980, it’s a "filthy, trashy novel."

1984 George Orwell
Challenged in Jackson County, FL back in 1981 because Orwell's novel is "pro-communist and contained explicit sexual matter."

Song of Solomon Toni Morrison
Only in 2009 was this book reinstated on the English curriculum at a school in Shelby, MI but parents “are to be informed in writing and at a meeting about the book’s content. Students not wanting to read the book can choose an alternative without academic penalty.”

But my absolute favourite reason for banning a novel is coincidentally for one of my favourite books. Just like the book, this reason has got the lot:

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest Ken Kesey
In 1974, five residents of Strongsville, OH, sued the board of education to remove Kesey’s book. Labelling it "pornographic," they stated that the novel "glorifies criminal activity, has a tendency to corrupt juveniles and contains descriptions of bestiality, bizarre violence, and torture, dismemberment, death, and human elimination."

These books are all available to borrow from the Library.

Further reading:

• A full list of ‘most-frequently challenged’ titles from 1990-1999, see: 100 most frequently challenged books and from 2000-2009: Top 100 Banned/challenged books
• Banned Books Week official site: www.bannedbooksweek.org