ABSTRACT
Quite a number of medieval English literary works make references to feasts and other food consumption habits. Most of them are employed to emphasize the richness or abundance of food in these feasts and to indicate the luxury enjoyed by the upper classes or are in the satirical and allegorical vein implying the related sin of gluttony and associated moral weaknesses. Chaucer, in the Canterbury Tales – and, especially, in the “portrait gallery” of fourteenth-century England presented in the “General Prologue”, which is unprecedented in English literature – offers a detailed depiction of the pilgrims. In some of these portraits food references play a significant part. Also in some of the tales narrated by the pilgrims, especially the fabliaux, food similes and metaphors point to additional layers of significance.
