Tastefully Written: Reflections on Fiction and the Feast

From Homer to Shakespeare to Dostoyevsky, authors of fiction have found meal scenes prove to be rich repositories of symbolism. In the introductory chapter of this thesis, I attempt to answer the question of why authors include scenes of feasting in their stories, tracing both the symbolic implications inherent in the act of eating and the significance of the feast to ancient Jewish and Greek culture. To this introduction, I append two creative works—a short story and a short film screenplay—that make use of the symbolism of feasting to tell a story about the humbling of pride and the extension of forgiveness.