표제지

지중해지역연구

Food, as a cultural code into which emotions, values and life habits that people in a society have in common are condensed, is not only a sign that stands for the power, the wealth, and the social status in a community, but also a index of religious, national, and racial identities of a society. This article scrutinizes the discourses of food in relation to foodstuffs, culinary practice, alimentary habits, and attitudes to food in Don Quijote de la Mancha in order to explore multiple meanings that they reveal.

Don Quijote by Cervantes includes significant discourses about food and diet; poor nobleman Alonso Quijano’s description of specific diets by day; meals that Don Quijote and Sancho Panza have with a variety of people that they met on the trip for their adventure; shepherds’ invitation to their humble food on the grass; the kinght of the green gaban Don Diego de Miranda’s invitation to dinner; the food that makes Sancho bewitched in rich man Camacho’s wedding party; Sancho Panza’s terrifying experience of a strict diet that his doctor forced him to follow after he took a control of Barataria Island; Don Antonio Moreno’s invitation to his house in Barcelona.

In the late 16th century when Spain began to decay under the reign of Felipe Ⅲ(1598-1612), Cervantes started to write Don Quijote. At that time the gap between the rich and the poor was so great that hunger was a serious social problem in Spain.

Don Quijote, which is a panorama that reflects the social realities of Spain in the 17th century, criticizes the contemporary social inequality and materialism and reveals character’s personality, world view and religious identity through the discourses of food.

* Key words: Discourse of food, Culture and alimentary habits, Spanish golden age food, Don Quijote’s diet, Food and religion, Food and taboo

* 이 논문은 2013년 정부(교육부)의 재원으로 한국연구재단의 지원을 받아 수행된 연구임(NRF-2013S1A5B5A07048492).

** 전북대학교 강의전담교수, 중남미문학 전공, 한국외국어대학교 박사학위 취득, leganitos@hanmail.net.