Document Type
Dissertation
Rights
Available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike 4.0 International Licence
Disciplines
6. HUMANITIES, General literature studies
Abstract
Food is fundamental to life. It is also fundamental to culture; through our production, manipulation and consumption of foodstuffs, the way in which we eat has amassed a range of rituals and rules. This suggests that food can be used to indicate more than mere biological need. Food and foodways are a common occurrence throughout literature, not least children’s literature. This thesis applies gastrocriticism as a paradigm to investigate the use of food and foodways in Enid Blyton’s Malory Towers, St. Clare’s and The Naughtiest Girl school series. Gastrocriticism is an emerging form of literary criticism that considers the complex relationships of humans to each other and the world they inhabit through food. It adopts an interdisciplinary approach utilising work from a broad range of fields including, anthropology, sociology, history and literary.
Food is abundant in Blyton’s work. This is particularly evident in her three school series. The boarding-schools becomes a home-from-home; food helps to form and cement friendships through the sharing of meals together, it may also reveal group structures, hierarchies or the social class of the characters. Food also helps to establish a specific genre through the use of tropes, conventions and food practices. These three series were written at a time of social upheaval in Britain and the world: the Second World War and subsequent period of austerity. The food and foodways displayed in the text can reveal much about the milieu in which they were written, describing both realities and fantasies that capture the zeitgeist of the era. In short, a gastrocritical approach offers a full and serious consideration of the importance of food in these works which enriches our understanding of them.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21427/5B77-C641
Recommended Citation
Broomfield, R. (2022). More Than Midnight Feasts?: A Gastrocritical Reading of Enid Blyton’s Malory Towers, St. Clare’s and The Naughtiest Girl in the School Series [Technological University Dublin]. DOI: 10.21427/5B77-C641
Included in
Children's and Young Adult Literature Commons, Cultural History Commons, Literature in English, British Isles Commons, Other Arts and Humanities Commons
Publication Details
A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for M.A. Gastronomy and Food Studies, Technological University Dublin, School of Culinary Art and Food Technology, May 2022.