Food in Nineteenth-Century Literature | Ronald D. LeBlanc (essay date 1997)
Ronald D. LeBlanc (essay date 1997)
SOURCE: LeBlanc, Ronald D. “An Appetite for Power: Predators, Carnivores, and Cannibals in Dostoevsky's Fiction.” In Food in Russian History and Culture, edited by Musya Glants and Joyce Toomre, pp. 124-45. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997.
[In the following essay, LeBlanc explores Dostoevsky's use of food and eating in his fiction, and suggests that the author uses such imagery as a metaphor for humans' efforts to dominate, or “devour” each other.]
We are what we all abhor, Anthropophagi and Cannibals, devourers not only of men, but of ourselves.
—Thomas Browne, Religio Medici
Cannibals? Who is not a cannibal?
—Herman Melville, Moby Dick
...But if ye bite and devour one another, take heed that ye be not consumed one of another.
[The entire page is 10423 words long]
Navigate
