Shaping the Body Politic: Mobile Food and Transnational Exchange in Urania

Abstract

This chapter examines the broadly defined practices of gift-giving in Mary Wroth’s Urania as representative of the politically expansive potential of food exchange. Arguing first that food can transcend the body to affect the body politic, the chapter then investigates the dynamic political function of gifts of fruit, marriage feasts, and charitable hospitality. If political power can be squandered or consolidated through behaviour at a feast, then wars can be lost or international coalitions nurtured through food gifts. Regional and national control might be fortified by the alliances forged during wedding celebrations, or alternatively overthrown, as illustrated by the episode of the pilgrim Parselius who takes advantage of hospitable traditions to remove a tyrant. As Wroth shows, elite women believed in their right to advise royalty on their behaviour, while recognizing the far-reaching effects of local food practices on regional, national, and international affairs.