ABSTRACT
Meat eating is a contested site in early modern English literature, the subject of religious and social stricture in genres as diverse as drama and social critique, civic directives, and books of cookery. Regulating the problematical questions of whether to eat meat, what meat to eat, when, and how much becomes a means to address broader issues of national identity, religion, economic status, gender and sexuality, and the animal/human boundary. This chapter argues that in the early modern period humans are made and marked through the regulation, definition, and refusal of flesh. Meat works as a means of demarcation in part because its physical substance requires of those who prepare and eat it multiple acts of separation and differentiation. At the same time, it is a cultural construct, its significance both deriving from and extending far beyond the material. Conceptually, its potential for category blurring requires a level of vigilance that also allows for the movement of such control to other arenas.
