{"id":8726,"date":"2018-07-12T16:01:22","date_gmt":"2018-07-12T20:01:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/gastronomyblog\/?p=8726"},"modified":"2018-07-05T16:13:08","modified_gmt":"2018-07-05T20:13:08","slug":"the-power-of-food-in-supernatural-storytelling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/gastronomyblog\/2018\/07\/12\/the-power-of-food-in-supernatural-storytelling\/","title":{"rendered":"The Power of Food in Supernatural Storytelling"},"content":{"rendered":"

Students in Dr. Karen Metheny\u2019s Summer Term course, Anthropology of Food (MET ML 641) are contributing guest posts this month. Today\u2019s post is from Sarah Critchley.<\/em><\/p>\n

This summer, our Anthropology of Food class has covered seemingly every conceivable way to study how food reflects a culture, but the article that stood out to me was about the supernatural. Alison Krogel\u2019s 2009 article, \u201cDangerous Repasts: Food and the Supernatural in the Quechua Oral Tradition\u201d shows the effect that food can communicate without even physically eating it. Indeed, the amount of food consumed by the Quechua people covered in this article was negligible, but the characters in the stories they told prepare feasts that kill those who reject them, cast spells against their husbands in a potato dish, and even the characters themselves can become the meal if they are out too late.<\/p>\n

Krogel includes a frequently-told story of a girl named Isicha Puytu who leaves her family behind after being tempted by a wealthy landowner. The girl\u2019s family members try one by one to convince her to come home by bringing her gifts of food. After the brother and the father have gone, the mother outdoes herself by making an expensive dish, which the daughter again rudely refuses. The mother curses her, and the girl dies. Krogel notes that parents like to tell this story as a \u201ctool for both entertaining and warning brazen children\u201d (2009, 111). Other tales in the article have specific morals that food serves to heighten: don\u2019t trust a witch even if she is your mother, don\u2019t be mean to your wife, and watch out for travelers that refuse to eat your food – they might be evil spirits who want to eat your baby instead!<\/p>\n

Thinking of food and the supernatural in Quechua tradition made me wonder how one could apply the same analysis to other folklore. As Krogel writes, \u201cstudying the techniques employed by narrators who weave foodways descriptions into their stories provides Food Studies scholars with a lens through which we might better come to understand a culture\u2019s aesthetic preferences and complex socio-cultural practices and belief systems\u201d (2009, 123-124). The story of Hansel and Gretel came to mind as I was thinking of how food can be a catalyst to teach a moral important to a society. Hansel and Gretel are captivated by the witch\u2019s delicious house, only to find it full of danger within. The tale serves to warn that appearances can belie reality and harkens back to the Quechua\u2019s message to warn \u201cbrazen children\u201d with the story of Isicha Puytu. Perhaps more significant, the reason the siblings were in the forest alone was because their mother (or step-mother, according to some versions) locked them out of the house because there wasn\u2019t enough food. When they return, she has died. Her death suggests that deliberately starving one\u2019s own children or family members deserves the ultimate punishment. Though we have less of an oral tradition today in the United States than the Quechua in the Peruvian Andes, comparisons can be made to the role of food in folklore and fairy tales that are meant to be a tool to teach cultural values. <\/span><\/p>\n

Works cited<\/strong><\/p>\n

Grimm, Jacob and Wilhelm. 2018. \u201cHansel and Gretel.\u201d Date of access, June 25, 2018. https:\/\/www.pitt.edu\/~dash\/grimm015.html<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Krogel, Alison. 2009. \u201cDangerous Repasts: Food and the Supernatural in the Quechua Oral Tradition.\u201d Food and Foodways<\/em> 17(2): 104-132.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Students in Dr. Karen Metheny\u2019s Summer Term course, Anthropology of Food (MET ML 641) are contributing guest posts this month. Today\u2019s post is from Sarah Critchley. This summer, our Anthropology of Food class has covered seemingly every conceivable way to study how food reflects a culture, but the article that stood out to me was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2776,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/gastronomyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8726"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/gastronomyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/gastronomyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/gastronomyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2776"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/gastronomyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8726"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/gastronomyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8726\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8728,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/gastronomyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8726\/revisions\/8728"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/gastronomyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/gastronomyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/gastronomyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}