Date: Thu, 14 May 1998 17:21:52 -0400 (EDT) From: Patrick Martins Subtleties, Power and Consumption: A Study of French and English Cuisine from 1300 to 1500 While it is difficult to fix precise dates to the Fall of Rome on one hand and the beginning of the Renaissance on the other, one thing is sure: referring to the time period as the Dark Ages ignores a rich history that includes innovations in art, architecture, fashion, the production of illuminated manuscripts, public spectacle, and cookery. However, some academics still make dark connotations when writing about medieval Europe. Historian Johan Huizingas influential book, Autumn of the Middle Ages, for instance, persistently employs the image of decay and decrepitude when he refers to life in fourteenth and fifteenth century France and the Netherlands. Even England, he claims, continued to hold onto disintegrating traditions well into the Renaissance. Many medievalists have contested this perspective in their works, as I will attempt to do through the examination of an often overlooked aspect of medieval feasting in France and England between the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries known as subtleties. Elaborate edible sculptures produced in noble households, these creations often took the shape of human or animal figures but could also include edible castles and ships in which performers would entertain diners. While the phenomenon of subtleties have much in common with other art-forms of the period, there are also many ways that they differ. By examining these similarities and differences I hope to demonstrate not only that food studies can extend medieval art-related discourse but also how by studying food in general, subtleties in particular, the school of thought that believes that the late Middle Ages is more a dawning of an age rather than the waning of one, will have another weapon in its arsenal. Making art out of edible material for the dinner table did not begin or end in the Middle Ages. Petronius, a companion of the Roman emperor Nero, reports in his book Satyricon, of being served a rabbit that was made to look like Pegasus, the winged horse of Greek mythology (Scully 1995: 107). In the eleventh century, an Egyptian caliph reportedly celebrated one Islamic feast day with one hundred and fifty seven figures and seven table-sized palaces made of sugar (Mintz 1986 88). In the early nineteenth century, the French chef Antoine Careme became famous for his pieces montees, confectionery creations which he modeled after ancient Roman architecture. An indirect descendent of the subtlety can be seen today with the wedding cake. While the creation of food sculptures has a long history, what is important for the scope of this paper is that between 1300 and 1500 A.D. these creations have a name and share certain characteristics that allow them to be placed into a single category. Referred to in contemporary English as a soteltie and in French as an entremet, subtleties were originally intended as entertainment for diners between courses. A simple subtlety might consist of a set piece while the more complicated ones known as entremets mouvants included live participants and automatons. The subtlety is a genre of performance: the food is the actor; the host is the producer; the chef, the director; the dining hall, the stage; the guests, the audience; and the servants, the ushers. As food historian Barbara Wheaton explains, entremets were amalgams of song, theater, mechanics, and carpentry, combined to convey an allegorical fantasy or even a political message (Wheaton 1983: 8). The stories these not very subtle subtleties told were analogous to the plot of a one act play. The play commences upon its presentation, and the moving edibles or the action around the stationary edibles enact the plot. These displays also provided an opportunity for a host to dine conspicuously thus demonstrating to his guests the marvels that wealth can buy. A medieval affinity for allegory can be seen in many art-forms including the plots of urban public spectacles, the making of illuminated bestiary manuscripts, which were second in readership to the Bible (Mermier 1989: 70), and in the stories told on the stained glass windows of various cathedrals. Aside from subtleties, power displays can be seen in contemporary architecture, the proliferation heraldic emblems that saturated any free space from church facades and coffins to goblets and knives at the dinner table, clothing and in public spectacles. By examining these art-forms, it will become apparent why subtleties existed; they are mere extensions of major allegorical and hierarchical trajectories that affected all of medieval life. However, more interesting than positing reasons for their existence, is an analysis of how the wonder and experience of witnessing the theater of subtleties differs from these other art-forms. Before examining how allegory and power display factor into the serving of subtleties, it is necessary to give some background on the topic. While the two hundred year period between 1300 and 1500 might seem like an arbitrary time frame to study the phenomenon of subtleties, I have chosen it for good reason. The earliest known recipe collections in medieval Europe appear around the beginning of the fourteenth century. In France these include only the Little Treatise of 1306, a now vanished collection of recipes that later formed the Liure fort excellent de cuysine, and, most importantly, the Sion manuscript which formed the foundation of the various versions of Taillevents The Viandier (Wheaton 1983: 28). In England, the most influential cookery manuscript was the Forme of Cury, written by the master cooks of Richard II in 1390, which, in turn, is based on a small number of early fourteenth century English cooking manuscripts. While food sculptures might have been produced before the fourteenth century in Europe, there exists no evidence to support this from illuminations, or the writings of chefs and non-chefs who only developed the taste for elaborate description around the fourteenth century (Hanawalt 1994: x). On the other end of the time line, the fifteenth century is an appropriate time to end an analysis on subtleties because a number of factors complicate what one must consider when dealing with food in medieval Europe after that time. Perhaps the most important factor is that by 1500, subtleties cease to be primarily edible creations, a key fact for my analysis, turning more towards grandiose spectacle made of wood and papier mache. Another reasons for the cutoff is the diminishing role of the Church, which wielded considerable influence on the eating habits of Europe, in the Renaissance. This was due in part to the Great Schism in 1387, which divided the Church into two factions (a dispute over who should be the new Pope resulted in England, Germany and Portugal supporting Urban VI in Rome and France, Scotland and Castile supporting Clement VIII in Avignon), and the Reformation in early sixteenth century Germany. The sixteenth century also witnessed the Dissolution of the Monasteries and the break with the Church of Rome which disrupted the social fabric of Europe. The nobility and gentry, especially the Protestant elite, obtained new found wealth from the redistribution of monastic lands and the rise of industrial activity, allowing them to demand new standards of splendor and move into courtly circles in greater numbers (Brears 1987: 57). Maritime achievements, such as the discovery of the New World and a sea-route to the Far East, made exotic foods more accessible to Europes wealthiest classes by the sixteenth century. Once exotic foods such as spices (from the East) and sugar (from the West) became available in greater quantities for cheaper prices, people other than the kings and wealthy nobility obtained access to and could afford to include these ingredients in their meals. This necessitated Europes richest families to alter the nature of their dining habits to stay one step ahead of their nearest competitors on the social hierarchy; a trend that ended in the seventeenth century when spices ceased to be a dominant factor in aristocratic cookbooks (Mennell 1996: 73). The proliferation of Guttenbergs printing press, which could be found in over two hundred and fifty European cities by the year 1500 (Mennell 1996: 64), also facilitated social emulation of cooking styles by the lower classes. This led to a shift in noble kitchens from quantitative display to distinguish themselves from their poorer counterparts to qualitative displays that included a more expensive yet more refined cooking style; less became more (Mennell 1996: 33). While the sixteenth century only witnessed the beginnings of these trends and demonstrates many culinary continuations from the end of the Middle Ages, I believe that the effects they had on subtleties makes it more appropriate to include this period in a separate study. Another reason why I end my analysis in 1500 stems from Italys increasing influence on French and English cooking which becomes quite marked around the time of Catherine de Medicis arrival in France to marry Henri II in 1533. When Catherine left Italy, she brought her personal chefs with her. Their cooking styles were much more heavily influenced by Renaissance revivals of ancient recipes and an Arabic cooking tradition that did not exist in France or England to the same extent. She also combined feasting into elaborate week-long court festivals which combined eating with drama and dance in ways that are different from fourteenth and fifteenth century feasts. Considering the breaks that were taking place in European culture around the time of 1500 both in direct and indirect relation to food, it becomes obvious that a paper on subtleties that exceeds the two hundred years I am examining would be better applied to book length. The isolation from outside influences and consistency of cooking habits in France and England during this time period allows conclusions that I draw on subtleties to be stronger and more manageable. An attentive reader should notice by this point in the paper that the countries I will be including in my analysis are France and England. The simplest explanation for this is that much more attention has been given to these cooking traditions in food-related literature than to those of Italy, Germany or Spain. A more complicated reason follows from my argument above: Italian, German and Spanish cooking styles were greatly affected by Near East traditions. Both Italy and Germany played key roles as middle-men in the international trade routes that connected Western Europe to the East, thus allowing for more cultural exchange which included cooking traditions. The Moorish influence in Spain gave its food more of an international flavor. While English and French cooking were also influenced by Islamic traditions due to twelfth and thirteenth century Crusade expeditions, compared to their European counterparts, the effects were negligible. Finally, chefs to the nobility vacillated between France and England to a greater extent than between other European countries, especially during the reign of Henry VI who ruled over both France and England in the fifteenth century. The remarkable similarity between the recipes in The Forme of Cury and The Viandier attest to the fact that upper class tables in France and England were furnished according to a common style, with dishes prepared by methods and according to recipes which were common property across the continent (Mennell 1996: 50). Therefore conclusions drawn about medieval food-related activity in France usually applies to England and visa-versa, becoming more muddled when applied to other European countries. The primary sources I will be drawing from for this paper are translations of Guillaume Tirels (nicknamed Taillevent) The Viandier and Chiquarts On Cookery. Taillevent was a chef for Philip VI in the middle of the fourteenth century and served Charles V as of 1364. There are five sets of manuscripts that survive bearing his name, the most comprehensive found at the Vatican Library. It is this manuscript that French historian, Terence Scully, primarily uses for his translation of the chefs recipes. While the manuscript dates from the first half of the fifteenth century (well after Taillevents death in 1395), he is still credited with most of its contents. As his book dominated French cookery until the beginning of the seventeenth century, it provides an excellent source for understanding the cooking techniques of medieval France (Wheaton 1983: 29). Chiquart was chief chef to Duke Amadeus VIII of Savoy (the future Pope Felix V). His manuscript, which dates from 1420, is also translated by Terence Scully and offers more evidence on how subtleties were prepared in medieval Europe. The only other French source that adequately depicts eating in medieval France is the Menagier de Paris from 1392, but the unknown author of this book on how to run a good household spends little time describing the more elaborate dishes and would, therefore, not be helpful on a paper that describes the most elaborate creations of all. The other sources I use for this paper are secondary sources which quote extensively from primary sources such as the Forme of Cury (which has not yet been translated into modern English) and draw upon evidence from contemporary courtesy manuals, household and court documents, legal records, medieval texts and literary romances. Finally, I draw upon evidence from medieval illuminations which provide an excellent source to understanding the dynamic of medieval dining including how subtleties appeared at the dinner table. These illuminations can be likened to video-cassettes of what went on in the dining hall. The last point that needs to be made concerning the information that follows is that the subtlety is a phenomenon specific to the wealthiest of medieval households. It is important not to generalize the findings of this paper to any class other than royalty and the wealthy nobility. While this limits the scope of the paper, the spectacular nature of these edible creations still makes it a topic worthy of study. It becomes even more worthy when one considers how little attention has been given to the subject in food literature. Of the many books which appear in my bibliography, none of them, their bibliographies included, deal with subtleties other than in passing. For the most part, these books concern themselves with medieval food in general and subtleties, therefore, are only mentioned as one aspect of a much larger topic. These books also do little more than give an historical reading of subtleties, perhaps mentioning that they are examples of power displays that characterized much of medieval dining at the time. Some authors even ignore the topic entirely. Sociologist Stephen Mennell, for instance, takes a developmental approach to food attitudes in England and France from the Middle Ages to today in his book All Manners of Food. He argues that structuralist claims on food habits from theorists like Mary Douglas, Claude Levi-Strauss, Pierre Bourdieu and Roland Barthes ignore that individual behavior, cultural tastes, intellectual ideas, social stratification, political power and economic organization all change over time; their desire to fit eating habits into systems does not allow for the marking of changes in food attitudes. He goes on to draw a trajectory of food habits which demonstrate a move from quantitative displays (in which as much food as possible is served) in medieval times to qualitative displays which included smaller servings and a general refinement of cuisine by the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. What he fails to mention is that before medieval England and France toned down their menus, they toned up and out, producing such structures like the tourte parmerienne: made in the shape of a crenelated castle, with chicken-drumstick turrets (Wheaton 1983: 15). Because these food-sculptures have only received minor attention, the field of medieval food studies stands to benefit from an in depth analysis on this phenomenon. Performance Studies is an excellent discipline for undertaking this project as its focus on theater readily lends itself to examining the entire food event rather than just the food itself. It will also help ground the theory and inform the causes of the study in question. Finally, Performance Studies will prove helpful to examining the relationship of subtleties to other art-forms like the street spectacle, which dominated the medieval landscape in the Middle Ages, and to examining how the issue of consumption, which is specific to subtleties, makes it a unique form of theater. Before getting to the heart of the subject however, it is important to examine some examples of subtleties as well as the backdrop in which they were presented at the dinner table. Feasts are the characteristic meal type of the Middle Ages. Madeleine Pelner Cosman, in her book, Fabulous Feasts, gives an example of what a medieval court feast menu might have looked like: First course: 1. Musclade of minnows 2. Salmon belly or sounds 3. Eels 4. Porpoise and peas 5. Baked herring with sugar 6. Green milwell 7. Pike 8. Roast lamprey 9. Roast sole 10. Roast porpoise 11. Gurnard 12. Baked lampry 13. Leche 14. A fritter 15. A Subtlety representing Spring, A Youthful Figure, Sanguineus. Second course 1. Dates in comfit 2. Red and white jelly 3. Conger, salmon, doree in syrup 4. Brett, turbot, or halibut 5. Carp, bass, millet, or trout 6. Chevin and bream 7. Seal 8. Roast eels and lampreys 9. A leche 10. A fritter 11. A Subtlety: Summer, A warrior, Colericus. Third course: 1. Almond cream Iardyne 2. Mawmenny potages 3. Fresh sturgeon 4. Breme 5. Perch in jelly 6. Whelks, minnows 7. Shrimps 8. Fresh broiled herring 9. Pety perueis 10. Leche fritter 11. A tansy 12. A Subtlety: Autumn, A Weary Man, Fleumaticus. Fourth course 1. Hot apples and pears with sugar candy 2. Ginger Columbyne 3. Wafers 4. Hypocras 5. A Subtlety: Winter, An Old Man, Melancolicus (Cosman 1995: 25). At first glance this menu may not explain much about medieval courtly dining but an in depth analysis shows that it has much to reveal. The four course format with ten to twelve dishes per course is not unusual for very wealthy households, although three courses is more common. The sheer number of dishes per course attests to the fact that it was choice and abundance that mattered more than taste. For example, Olivier de La Marche, who planned two of the most famous fifteenth century feasts in Europe, comments extensively on the clothes, jousts, music, and decorations but does not say what was eaten other than that the food was rich and copious, very richly served, and rich and stately...with a multiplicity of dishes and of foods (Wheaton 1983: 1). The copious nature of medieval feasts speaks to the attention given to appearance; the eye was catered to as much as the palate. The Great Hall, where most feasts took place, served various social functions including as a living room, parlor, audience chamber and social center. During dinner, the hosts and any important guests sat at a high table, perpendicular to the other tables, or under a richly decorated canopy called a baldaquin at the middle of a single large wooden table. The high table allowed the host to gaze across the Hall while his guests could have clear site-lines to see him dining on a raised platform. When the host ate on the same level as his lessers, the richly decorated baldaquin visually marked his place even if guests could not see him. The other guests sat in descending order from the hosts according to rank. The table itself was adorned with an elaborate white cloth called a sanap which served as a backdrop for utensils, the most spectacular being the table fountain, which spouted various wines and fragrant waters, and the nef, a jewel laden salt container. The nef served as a visual boundary separating the higher ranking officials who dined above the salt from the not so worthy who ate below it. Large slices of bread called trenchers, which served as plates, a single goblet for each diner and a knife and spoon (fingers were the eating utensil of choice) were the only other items which normally graced the medieval table. The sparsity of tableware which could demonstrate the hosts wealth necessitated the few items that were on the table to be very richly decorated: gold, silver, pewter, copper and jewels were the materials of choice. The multi-colored tapestries and expensive banners that adorned the Halls walls combined with the elegant platters and ewers displayed on a cupboard called an aumbry to create an environment that intends visual pleasure to stimulate the palate (Cosman 1995: 15-17). While the eye and palate received much attention at the medieval table, by no means should that imply that the other senses were forgotten. Trumpets, lutes, harps and a choir, whose music was coordinated with the serving of dishes for dramatic effect, added to the din of servants entering and exiting the Great Hall and guests commenting on the generosity of the host (Cosman 1995: 17-18). Many noble families employed a permanent entertainment troupe or hired traveling performers to distract guests between courses. Tumblers, acrobats, jugglers, animal trainers, magicians, comedians and story-tellers were among the preferred performers at the medieval table (Henisch 1994: 208). Diners were often expected to participate in these feast performances. As Madeleine Pelner Cosman explains, sometimes small flat platters called roundels, made of porcelain or stiff paper, were served with the last course of a feast. When the food was eaten, each guest turned over his roundel to find written on the reverse a text or poem or bawdy phrase which required an improvised setting and singing (Cosman 1995: 18). Many diners also participated in disguises, performances that entailed making surprise entrances into the dining hall wearing expensive and elaborate costumes. In 1347, wardrobe accounts of Edward III list disguise costumes for at least eighty-four people that include fourteen peacock headdresses and wings, fourteen swan headdresses and wings, and fourteen dragon headdresses (Henisch 1994: 221). These performances combined to make a medieval dinner an event that combined eye-candy, tasty food, sweet music and food for thought. Each course at a feast could consist of meat, poultry, fish, stew or sweet dishes. The menu above consists of only fish and sweets which suggests that it was intended for a fast day. The Church designated Wednesday, Friday and Saturday of every week and the four weeks of the Advent (before Christmas) and the six weeks of Lent (before Spring) as fast days. On these days, food items such as meat, butter, cheese, eggs, and milk were forbidden. But fish (especially herring, which appears twice in the above menu), as Bridget Ann Henisch explains, providentially, had escaped Gods curse on the earth by living in the water. Water itself was an element of special sanctity, washing away the sins of the world in Noahs Flood, and the sins of the individual in baptism (Henisch 1994: 33). As the Church wielded considerable influence on the medieval diner most of the meat recipes in the Viandier and On Cookery offer directions for fish substitutes on fast days. Fasts were intended as vehicles for self-discipline, a private mortification for ones personal sins and a public mortification for those of society...a fast was to be endured for its spiritual benefit: dazzling displays of willpower and austerity were frowned on (Henisch 1994: 28). However, as one can see by the contents of our menu, it is obvious that Europes wealthiest classes followed fast rules more in letter than in spirit. Chefs of noble households were instructed to make fast days as painless as possible by masking the less delectable fast foods to taste more like the tasty non-fast foods. The Menagier de Paris, for instance, gives a recipe for Esturgeon contrefait de veau (Sturgeon Pretending to be veal). In The Forme of Cury, a recipe for Hastletes of Fruyt instructs how to make dried fruit and almond paste taste like and look like meat (Scully 1995: 104). Taillevents Viandier gives a recipe entitled Flans, tartes en Kareme: To Make Flans or Tarts in Lent which will taste of cheese (Taillevent 1988: 214). Taillevent uses almonds, which were a medieval staple, to doctor his tarts into cheese substitutes. Terence Scully identifies this phenomenon of culinary playfulness, that in its beginnings probably had a practical function as an origin of the subtlety (Scully 1995: 104). Another method of masking fast food was through the use of spices which also played a prominent role in medieval recipes. Spices that Taillevent says are necessary to follow his recipes include ginger, cinnamon, cloves, grains of paradise, long pepper, aspic, round pepper, cassia buds, saffron, nutmeg, bay leaves, galingale, mace, cumin, sugar, garlic, onions, shallots and scallions (Taillevent 1988: 230). There are many reasons why spices were so popular: for taste; since medieval diners picked food from various bowls with their fingers, spices were a good substitute for messy sauces; they testified to the wealth of the host since spices were so costly and difficult to obtain; and, most of all, because of the color they added to the dishes they accompanied. Vivid colors, Wheaton explains, were highly prized and were often achieved at the expense of flavor (Wheaton 1983: 15). The color red was obtained from sunflower and yellow from what Scully calls the king of medieval spices: saffron. Taillevent recommends parsley, herb bennet, sorrel, vine leaves or vine shoots, currants and green wheat in winter to color foods green. Gold and silver leaf, which were placed on food surfaces brushed with egg whites, were also used for their colorful effects, especially on pastry. What Huizinga calls barbaric princely ostentation (Huizinga 1996: 302) resembles more what Henisch calls high theater. The sheer amount of colorized foods, the masking of foods to appear like something other than what they are, the entertainment, the richly decorated accoutrements of the dining hall and the attention given to the seating arrangements of guests attest to the fact that a medieval feast was more than a meal. It was a complex event; an event which used these displays of ostentation for a purpose. When a guest entered the Great Hall for a meal, he or she was crossing a highly charged threshold. As Henisch explains, a ceremonial dinner was a visible demonstration of the ties of power, dependence, and mutual obligation which bound the hosts and guests. It was politic for the host to appear generous, because the lavishness of his table gave the clue to his resources; it was wise to be both hospitable to dependents and discriminating in the choice of guests of honor, because the number and caliber of the diners in the hall revealed his importance and his power (Henisch 1994: 56). The tactic, par excellence, for the host to appear wealthy and powerful was to be conspicuous. Conspicuous consumption is a term invoked by many academics to describe the medieval feast. Money and effort were invested in display to advertise the wealth of the host; wealth was performed to express social stratification and social solidarity. In the case of the feast, this power display was consumed by the eye, ear, palate and mind. Food served as an excellent means of being conspicuous because whereas the banners and tapestries on the wall or the nef and wine fountain on the table were permanent fixtures, food has the added attribute of being ephemeral. When a host spends money on food, he spends it on something that will not last; his investment comes in the form of the place the event will hold in the memory of those who attend rather than in a concrete durable object. Conspicuousness with food implies frivolity, decadence, ostentation, pomp, splendor, gaudery and even waste. The realization of these images translate into power for the person who is able to afford invoking them. Subtleties were the supreme way of accomplishing this goal. The subtlety was the most expensive and complicated food item on the medieval dinner table. Served between courses, it stood alone, a single object with the responsibility of equalling the splendor of the multitude of dishes and fanfare that made up the courses themselves. It accounted for its solitude with its spectacular nature; size mattered for the subtlety. Verticality was an important attribute for these creations as demonstrated by accounts which describe edible castles which housed musicians playing flutes and violins. Madeleine Cosman describes recipes from The Forme of Cury: many towered castles or rigged ships or hunters riding to hounds or cathedrals glistening with altars were made of spun sugar, pastry or marzipan (Cosman 1995: 33). These confections were often served as a final course of a feast in a room other than the dining hall. Known at the time as a banquet, this sweet-meat course was a precursor to the modern day dessert. Holding banquets in another room (or in another section of the hosts grounds, such as a tower that could provide a pleasant view) allowed the guests to digest their meals and enjoy a change of venue that could help them relax their senses for the subtleties and pleasant conversation that were to follow (Stead 1986: 115-152). A record of another subtlety appears on an illumination from the fourteenth century showing an edible rigged ship in water complete with actors scaling ladders to a turreted castle -- a reenactment of a 1099 Crusade battle that resulted in the capture of Jerusalem. Some of these subtleties consisted of large structures made of papier mache, heavy paper board or wood that contained edible food on them. At one English feast, two life-sized green and silver trees with candied pears, peaches, apples, figs and many other fruit hanging from its branches were served as a final course. At the same feast the main course consisted of, a sculpted castle with beasts--deer, boar, goats, and hares... a fountain in whose center spouted wine in five directions (and) cooked peacocks that seemed to be alive, pheasants, partridges, and other wild birds (Cosman 1995: 33). Chiquart provides a recipe for a castle he used for a feast in honor of Duke Amadeus VIII of Savoy. I will quote extensively from this recipe as it provides evidence of many of the characteristics of subtleties I have already mentioned. For a raised entremets, that is, a castle, you need for its base a good big four-man litter, and in that litter you need four towers set at each corner of it, each and every tower to be fortified with breteches and machicolations. In every tower there must be archers and crossbowmen (very probably edible) to defend that fortress, and furthermore in every tower there will be a candle or torch to give light. They will support branches bearing flowers and fruits of every sort of tree and upon those branches will be birds of every variety. In the courtyard at the foot of each tower there will be: in one of the towers, a boars head, armed and glazed, breathing fire; in another one, a large pike, and this pike will be cooked in three ways -- the one-third at the tail, fried, the one-third in the middle, boiled, and the one-third at the head, roasted on the grill; and this pike will be set up at the foot of the second tower looking out on the fire-breathing animal. (Now you must consider the saucing with which that pike should be eaten, and that is, the fried with oranges, the boiled with a good Green Sauce sharpened with a little vinegar, and the roasted pike should be eaten with Green Verjuice Sauce which is made with sorrel). At the foot of the next tower, a glazed piglet looking out and breathing fire; and at the foot of the last tower a skinned and redressed swan likewise breathing fire...At the crenels of that courtyard there should be hens, skinned, redressed and glazed, and glazed hedgehogs, and glazed meatballs, and Spanish pots made of meat and all glazed; the molded work of paste, that is to say, hares, brachet hounds, stags, wild boars, the huntsmen with their horns, partridge, lobsters, dolphins, all this work molded work of pea and bean paste; make of molded meat paste all the castles curtain walls which will go all around the castle, and they should be long enough down to the ground that the bearers of the castle cannot be seen (Chiquart 1986: 30-37). In short, Chiquarts castle is the very embodiment of conspicuousness! Chiquart intended the castle to house four musicians to entertain the diners in case the structure by itself was not spectacular enough. His emphasis on verticality makes this subtlety resemble an architectural creation more than a dish of food. However, his attention to detail concerning the food that appears on the castle assures his readers that it is its edible quality that matters as much, if not more, than the non-edible features. The pike is to be cooked three ways, with a different sauce for each third. The hens are to be skinned, redressed and glazed, a common feature of animals served as subtleties, allowing the diner to be surprised by the fact that what appears uncooked is really ready to be eaten. Pea and bean paste are molded to make stags, hunters and lobsters. Even the castles curtain walls, whose chief purpose appears to be hiding the servants who carry the structure into the dining hall, is to be made of meat paste. The sheer size of this subtlety, the cost and effort that goes into making such an object and the complexity and attention given to detail make it a testament to the power of the host; a power that becomes even more awesome when one considers that only a few hours after its appearance at the dining table nothing but its bare skeleton will be left. The host reverses the motto of making money go a long way; his intention is to make his money go a short way, but to go out with a bang! Not all subtleties were made to impress with sheer size. Many chefs relied on their ingenuity with food to create a sense of amusement, awe or mystery with a subtlety. Among some tactics employed by noble chefs for simpler creations include redressing animals in their own feathers or skin after cooking them so as to make them look alive, stuffing whole animals with smaller animals and sewing halves of different animals to one another to make never before seen beasts such as a chickpig, a ducken or a hedgecock! The stereotypical medieval image of an animal appearing in a lifelike pose is the pig with an apple its mouth but hens, swans, pheasants and peacocks were often redressed to surprise the diner. The Neapolitan Collection includes a recipe entitled To Make a Cow, a Calf or a Stag Look Alive which involves serving the animal with the head and hooves still attached to it; then, by means of iron bars fixed onto a solid platform and passed through its shanks, the gutted, stuffed, cooked and redressed animal is made to assume a lifelike posture--up until the time the carving knife must attack it (Scully 1995: 106). Chiquart also gives a recipe to substitute a cooked goose for a peacocks carcass, redressing the goose in the peacocks skin and feathers. These creations were an edible form of disguise not unlike the mysterious performances that surprised diners at the table. Medieval chefs did not stop at serving what appeared to be live animals; they also combined animals or even created their own species. Taillevents recipe for Coqz heaumez requires glazing a chicken and seating it astride a piglet. The chicken, he states, needs a helmet of glued paper and a lance couched at the breast of the bird, and these should be covered with gold or silver-leaf for lords, or with white, red or green tin-leaf (Taillevent 1998: 300). The Cokagrys and Cockantrice in The Forme of Cury are half chicken, half piglet creations that question the lessons learned from natural history. Chiquart even explains how to make Pilgrim Capons made to look human, bearing a staff made of roast lamprey or an eel if the lamprey is out of season. Many of these creations were served with fire coming out of their mouths to add to the sense of awe they were meant to instill in the guest. It is this very sense of awe that lies beneath the idea of conspicuous consumption, the operative concept which is responsible for its effects. I have already established how subtleties are examples of conspicuous consumption. The expenditure, effort and time required to construct such complex edible objects testify to the generosity of the host and enforce the ties of power that were so important to a feudal society. But seeing a subtlety does not directly translate into the confirming of the hosts power. The effects of conspicuous consumption rely on a moment in the experience of the viewer; a moment that Art Historian, Roy Strong, calls an experience of wonder. The effect of conspicuous displays is a process that depends on the crucial moment of wondrous encounter with the subtlety to evoke emotions of awe, marvel, ravishment and magnificence in the viewer. These emotions are the catalyst for the intended results of being conspicuous. The ability to provide these moments are crucial to cast the leaders of society into precisely the heroic roles they should occupy (Strong 1984: 40). The subtlety is, in many ways, a superior symbolic technology in that it is a tool able to produce an experience of wonder whenever it is carried or wheeled into the dining hall. Many philosophers have dealt with the aesthetic of wonder in their writings, which can be applied to the experiences of medieval diners. English Professor, Stephen Greenblatt, who speaks of wonder in relation to the first encounters of the New World by Europeans in his book Marvelous Possessions, defines it as something like a startle reflex one can observe in infants: eyes widened, arms outstretched, breathing stilled, the whole body momentarily convulsed (Greenblatt 1992: 14). He associates his view with those of Albertus Magnus who locates the effects of wonder deep within the physical body, namely in the heart and blood. Wonder, Greenblatt continues, takes place not out there or along the receptive surfaces of the body where the self encounters the world, but deep within, at the vital, emotional center of the witness...wonder is absolutely exigent, a primary radical passion (Greenblatt 1992: 16-17). These beliefs trace their origins to Aristotle who also believed the perception of wonder precedes knowledge and lies in the physical body. Other philosophers have claimed wonder is not registered in the heart which seeks to categorize the object in question as good or evil, but in the brain. Descartes describes a marvelous experience as one which seeks to be understood calling, therefore, upon the spirits which are in the cavities of the brain to attend to the object which produces this effect. Spinoza also locates wonders effect in the brain claiming, the mind comes to a stand, because the particular concept in question has no connection with other concepts (Greenblatt 1992: 20). The experience of wonder blurs the line between reality and fiction, between what one knows and what is impossible, between what is true and what is unbelievable. The marvelous is its own category of emotion, resisting incorporation into an ideological framework that characterizes other experiences. As de Certeau claims, its mysterious power is an absence of meaning (Greenblatt 1992: 19). The soul, brain, or heart are taken by surprise, rendered immobile for a moment; a moment that in the case of medieval feasts, benefits the person responsible for producing these effects. The subtlety is a tool to produce this sense of positive ravishment; its fundamental objective being to enforce the power of the host through artistic ingenuity that can shock the guest. Fire emitting from a beasts mouth, music coming from inside an edible castle, stags that look as if they are walking into the dining hall and the presentation of never before seen animals are vehicles for producing wonder in dinner guests. The effect of these encounters, the decisive emotional and intellectual experience in the presence of radical difference (Greenblatt 1992: 14), imprint themselves in ones memory in a way that is wondrous in its own right. Writing twenty years after his encounter with Brazilian natives in 1585, Jean de Lery writes, I stood there transported with delight. Whenever I remember it, my heart trembles, and it seems their voices are still in my ears (Greenblatt 1992: 16). Concerning medieval feasts, Henisch explains, the great feast warmed the heart and nourished the imagination long after the last crumbs had been swept away, the last expenses noted down and added up (Henisch 1994: 236). Its power to move men, she continues, can be understood in a excerpt from George Cavendish who writes about a feast sponsored by Henry VIII thirty years after the event; an event so splendid, it masked for a moment the hard and frightening realities of Henrys court. As Cavendish explains, But to describe the dishes, the subtleties, the many strange devices...I do both lack wit in my gross old head and cunning in my bowels to declare the wondrous and curious imaginations in the same invented and devised (Henisch 1994: 236). The encounter with these subtleties transported his mind and heart to a place that he cannot explain but that he can never forget. Catherine di Medici (whose reign falls outside the scope of this paper) is an example of a monarch who used the phenomenon of wonder as a weapon. Week-long wonder-producing court festivals had the effect of subjugating warring factions of the French aristocracy after the death of her husband when her monarchy was bankrupt and her son was too young to take over the responsibilities of the Crown. In medieval times, kings and nobility took advantage of the stilled emotional and intellectual states prompted by subtleties to tell political and religious messages that confirmed and enforced their power. At the Feast of the Pheasant, for example, Philip the Fair used a subtlety to induce his guests to pledge allegiance to his planned Crusade expedition to rescue Constantinople from the hated Turks. As Wheaton explains, a giant Saracen entered, leading an elephant (very possibly edible). Seated on the elephant was that excellent knight, co-organizer, and later chronicler of the feast, Oliver de La Marche, playing the role of the captive Eastern church (Wheaton 1983: 8). Charles the Bold used a subtlety consisting of some thirty pies, each enclosed in a silk pavilion and each bearing the name of a walled town under Charless rule (Wheaton 1983: 8) to demonstrate his military and political strength. The former subtlety literally intended to motivate men into action through its creation of a sense of wonder. The latter, perhaps, used wonder to motivate men into complacency. In each case, a sense of awe was utilized by the host to bend his guests to his will. As Scully explains, subtleties could also be used for religious or allegorical purposes, thus confirming the moral order and ensuring the status quo in which the host held a powerful position. Moral themes, he states, particularly religious or pseudo-religious ones, lent themselves to such treatment: the ages of man, astrological figures, even mythological animals (Scully 1995: 109). The subtleties that appear at the end of the four courses of the fast menu above fall under this category. The Youthful Figure, Sanguineus, Summer, A warrior Colericus, Autumn, A Weary Man, Flematicus, and Winter, An Old Man, Melancolicus, were subtleties designed to evoke images of the ages of man. English professor J.A. Burrow explains in his book, The Ages of Man, that medieval thinkers divided a persons life into segments, each segment dictating an appropriate behavior in the individual. Biologists divided a human life into three stages (growth, stasis and decline), physiologists into four stages (childhood, youth, maturity and old age), and astrologers into seven (coordinating with the seven known planets at the time). Based on the medical teachings of Galen and taught at the medical college at Salerno, the physiologists division (by far the most frequently cited theory on the subject in medieval literature according to Burrow) of four, coordinates with the four seasons of the year, the four ages of man (youth, maturity (warrior), weariness and old age) and the four humours or temperaments (blood (sanguine), choler, phlegm and melancholy). This subtlety uses the sense of awe it creates to associate the host with the forces of life, the wisdom of comprehending the laws of nature, and the ability to control it. Other religious or allegorical subtleties could invoke ideas of dynasty, sanctity, mystery, virtue, nature, grace, fortune; each with their own symbols and meaning. A sophisticated audience was therefore a necessity for grasping the often complex messages conveyed after the wondrous moment of the subtlety had worn off, allowing the mind to work and the heart to resume its beating. In this vein, Wheaton compares feasts, subtleties in particular, to medieval illuminated manuscript pages. Food, she says, is analogous to the manuscript text: eating (reading) the meal was the occasion for the events that went on around it (the illuminations). As the lettering of the text was of subsidiary importance (to the illumination) on the page to the beholder, so the dishes on the table were only a modest part of the elaborate spectacle. The major entremets mouvants, such as the allegorical conquest of Jerusalem, are comparable to the formal framed scene on the vellum page. The lesser entremets-- the fantastic creatures, the singing lions, the griffin spewing forth live birds--are similar to the more loosely related ornaments on the manuscript page (Wheaton 1983: 9). The fact that many manuscript artists in medieval times also worked on producing subtleties would seem to support her claim. Indeed beasts and birds were a common vehicle for transmitting messages throughout the Middle Ages. The Church, for example, used drawings of beasts to teach lessons from the Bible to their congregations in illuminated bestiary manuscripts. Bestiaries are collections of animal descriptions (real and imagined) based on a second century natural history book called Physiologus that have been interpreted as spiritual or moral lessons. As Art History Professor, Willene Clark, and English Professor, Meradith McMunn, explain, for every virtue and for every sin there is an example drawn from bestiaries, and animals exemplify the human world (Clark 1989: 1). For instance, the horns of an antelope might get caught in a bush in the same way humans might get caught in a life of sin. The nightingale represented love, the elephant implied chastity, the ape, ludeness and lust and the peacock, the purity of someone who never turns to sin. A popular source for sermon writers and often used as a monastic teaching text and in schools, bestiaries were also commissioned by many wealthy households to provide visual enjoyment and literary and religious edification. The reasons for the popularity of these books include that the pictures of beasts allowed those who are stimulated visually to enjoy learning Church doctrine through the colorful drawings of animals. The Church enjoyed the positive effects pictures of beasts had on the memory of the laity who used the animal kingdom as a type of memory palace; each beast keying a particular moral lesson that they might not normally remember without the strong colors and artistic skill of the artist (Rowland 1989: 12-21). Looking for messages in the rendering of animals, be it in a book or at the dinner table, was not at all unusual for a person at the time. This supports Wheatons association of subtleties to books, but by her logic, the subtlety would also resemble a number of other art-forms of the medieval period. I have established that subtleties served three functions: entertainment, as an instrument for the host to demonstrate his power and influence and as a means to convey political or allegorical messages to the guests at the table. These characteristics apply to many contemporary art-forms; subtleties were in some ways mere extensions of major artistic trajectories of the period. What I hope to demonstrate by extending Wheatons argument to these art-forms is that subtleties can extend discourse on medieval art which all share common characteristics. More importantly, these descriptions will allow for an examination of how subtleties are unlike these art-forms, deserving of its own category of performance. Late medieval art and architecture exemplify both the desire to be conspicuous and the trend of telling stories through non-textual means. Art-historian, Wim Swaan, contends with Huizingas depiction of medieval art claiming that the Middle Ages waned in a pyrotechnic blaze of glory, leaving as legacy some of the most spectacularly beautiful buildings and sculpture in the world (Swann 1977: 7). The Perpendicular style dominated English architecture from 1370 to just after the sixteenth century. Identified by its decorative bent, the style can be seen in numerous additions to churches and cathedrals done at the time. Some of these additions include over two thousand elaborately decorated chantries (tomb-chest with effigy enclosed within a cage structure of stone, equipped with an alter), which were commissioned by wealthy Englishmen between 1370 and 1500 so that their bodies might rest in the peace of a cathedral (Swann 1977: 31). Placing the dead inside the cathedral rather than outside, elevating the body rather than burying it, the effigies attention to realism and the decorative armor that saturated the tomb speak to the medieval desire of being conspicuous even after death. Parish churches also rose in prominence at the time as they provided yet another canvass with which people with money could display their wealth. As Swann explains, the medieval mason soon realized the decorative possibilities (of the parish church) and developed a wide repertoire of designs, ranging from such architectural motifs as panelling and blank arcading to an extremely imaginative use of monograms, initials, and even quite lengthy inscriptions (Swann 1977: 39). Countless emblems, inscriptions and heraldic devices saturated the facades of church walls, chantries, and porches and towers which were added to many churches allowing for increased comfort of locals who used the church as a meeting place. A desire for excessive ornamentation also allowed wood carvers to give free rein to his imagination, provide social comment and indulge his keen and often ribald sense of humor. There is a wide range of subject matter based on classical myth and legend, and popular romances such as Tristan and Isolde...and figures and foliage carving of purely decorative character (Swann 1977: 48). Animal lore, fable and pseudo-science overlaid with Christian symbolism were other themes used for decoration. Stain-glass was the medieval method of painting par excellence, exemplifying the same decorative trajectory as the architecture. The parish church at Lavenham includes a window with over one hundred and two heraldic crests of John de Vere who commissioned its building in 1485. Perhaps the greatest stain-glass window produced in the Middle Ages is the east window of York Minster (1405-1408), the largest area of medieval stain-glass in Europe. At seventy-two feet, it contains one hundred and seventeen panels depicting scenes from the Old Testament and the Apocalypse, which demonstrate the new bourgeois and secular spirit of the time. The depiction of Noahs Ark, for example, includes Noah and his family fashionably dressed in the garb of a wealthy English merchant (Swan 1977: 63). The elaborate tapestries that decorated the dining hall of the medieval castle also told religious and political stories that required an audience to read art. Medieval art and architecture therefore, resembled subtleties in their drawing of attention to those who paid for them, their use of religious and allegorical stories requiring a sophisticated audience to read them for meaning and as a decorative entertainment for viewers. Creating a sense of wonder in the viewer might also have been a goal for the benefactors of the churches and stain-glass who hoped that the sheer magnificence of their property would ensure their name being remembered by all who gazed upon it. Medieval costume can also be understood as form of mobile text which conspicuously spells out rank and wealth. While the poorer classes dressed in simple fashion, the rich marked their wealth with ornate and flamboyant clothing. Drawing evidence from paintings, sculptures, miniatures, manuscripts, stain-glass, effigies, and surviving clothing, Mary Houston draws a trajectory of increasingly ornate displays of wealth in fashion over three centuries in her book, Medieval Costume in England and France The 13th, 14th, and 15th Centuries. By the fourteenth century, wealthy dress was characterized by a saturation of heraldic imagery and jewelry. Silks, embroidery, cloaks and armor were often decorated with animals and birds associated with the family badge or coat of arms and elaborately produced foliage as a backdrop (known as the Naturalistic style). By the fifteenth century, male courtly costumes were so long they trailed behind their owners as they walked; their hats, often made with tall feathers sewn with jewelry, soared above them fanning out in all directions. A common hat worn by women was the Steeple Head-dress (held up with a stick) often with a double veil thrown over it, which must add greatly to the strain of wear (Houston 1996: 178). Swan likens aristocratic dressing habits to a competition. The length of shoe (poulain) one could wear was tightly regulated in France: kings, princes and dukes could wear shoes with points measuring two and a half times the length of their feet; the higher aristocracy twice the length; lower nobility one and a half times the length; the rich bourgeois one time the length; and the common man half the length (Swan 1977: 14). Color was another crucial dimension to fashion: Houston lists one womens outfit as, veil, white; head-dress, wimple, chemisette and shoes, black; dress, rose; wide belt, blue; second girdle, black and gold; fur trimmings, white (Houston 1996: 179). The various colors, elaborate and flamboyant design and attention to detail with animals and emblems that refer to the family name, speak to many of the characteristics that define subtleties. As Houston states, the decorations of fifteenth century costume (like the subtlety) were made with a grace and abandon which captivates the beholder (Houston 1996: 197). Illuminated manuscripts, art, architecture and costume all demonstrate how subtleties can be seen as mere extensions of major artistic trajectories of the late Middle Ages. However, comparing them to food ignores an important characteristic that differentiates them, namely that food is ephemeral. The intention of a subtlety is to create an experience rather than something that can be given as a gift or sold. Unlike permanent displays of power, the subtlety it not durable, it spoils, it has a fixed life-span that ends when it is eaten. The subtlety also enters the dining hall in motion: the set itself is wheeled in, fire blazes out of the mouths of beasts and the actors are put into life-like poses intended to be animated by other performers or the imagination. To quote Philip Stewart, the subtlety is a one act play, it seeks the utmost impact in the first glance (el-Khoury 1998: 60). In this way it is more like theater and should therefore be compared to actual performance, an art-form that in the Middle Ages shared its qualities as a source of entertainment, of being conspicuous, of using allegory and of being ephemeral. The public street spectacle was the primary form of medieval theater, dominating the French and English landscape. These performances will serve as the final point of comparison before we examine how the subtlety can be understood as a unique genre of performance; its own category of theater. The public spectacle was designed to impress events on the collective memory of the people who witnessed them. The spectacle served various functions ranging from the royal entry into a city to the visual witnessing of the signing of legal documents. These performances allowed kings and citizens to mark themselves in public either as figures of power or merely as figures who exist within the community. The effort that went into these spectacles and the frequency with which they occur implies that public display, or self-advertisement, was imperative to gaining legitimacy for the persons involved. Allegory was a means often used to obtain this conspicuousness. Perhaps the most spectacular spectacle was the royal entry. These events were opportunities for the king to awe his subjects with public displays of pomp and ceremony. Historian James Murray quotes Ernst Kantorowicz who notes the manifold liturgical and theological layers of the advent ceremony: Time and again it has been announced on these occasions that the comer is the Expected One and that accordingly the city...is another Zion. For whenever a king arrived at the gates of a city, celestial Jerusalem seemed to descend from Heaven to earth (Murray 1994: 140). Flamboyant public displays such as the sight of the magnificent robes worn by the canons and choir, the smell of incense, (and) above all the sounds of music and bells (Murray 1994: 143) helped the king instill this sense of importance in the population. The entry was also an opportunity for the population, from town prostitutes to highest officials, to individually mark themselves to the king (Bryant 1994: 5). As Medievalist Lawrence Bryant explains, Parisians used the royal entry of Henry VI (the king of both England and France as of 1429) as an opportunity to put up spectacular tableaux vivants that symbolized their right to self-rule while Henry lived England. London, in turn, used Henrys entry to mark the city as his home (his chamber) with the citys guilds marking their loyalty and friendship to the young king by carrying his personal canopy as he was carried through the citys streets. Giant canvass and basketwork figures of Nature, Grace and Fortune and two antelopes supporting the arms of France and England helped ensure Londons good standing with their king. Smaller cities relied on the impression their public spectacles made on visiting dignitaries, in the hope that the right amount of wine, fish, processions, and entertainments would convince a guest to take municipal interests to heart (Attreed 1994: 213). It was important for smaller towns to choose who they would honor with a welcome ceremony wisely as a demonstration of loyalty to the wrong person could result in the wrath of his enemy. The War of the Roses presented just such a dilemma to many English towns who had to decide whether to support Edward of York or Henry VI. Likewise, pretenders to the throne relied on the wise use of propaganda in public spectacles to ensure their claims to kingship. Historian Lorraine Attreed credits Henry Tudors use of myth, especially his claimed descent from King Arthur (Attreed 1994: 220), in public spectacles as one of the main reasons the populace supported him to achieve and keep the crown as Henry VII as of 1485. Once he strengthened his position as king, Henry relied on awesome public displays of power, which included allegorical associations of his monarchy with heaven, to ensure his right to the throne. Urban religious guilds staged annual processions to create a sense of internal cohesion as well as to mark themselves to the wider community. Brightly colored uniforms worn by members distinguished them from the rest of the community. Many guilds enacted simple dramas for their annual processions. As Historian Benjamin McRee explains, the Guild of Saint George procession in Norwich included a basketwork and canvass fire-breathing dragon with an actor playing Saint George jousting his legendary opponent. The dragon was used as a means to produce a sense of wonder in the Norwich population assuring the prestigious status of the guild. Other more unusual forms of spectacle include Londons Midsummer Watch which involved a ceremonial enactment of the traditional town watch in spectacular proportions. English Professor Sheila Lindenbaum describes this annual event as an opportunity for Londons citizens to awe potential trouble-makers within the city as well as foreign invaders represented by the allegorical figure of Soldon. The event also allowed the mayor to display his power to his subjects. As she explains, the visual splendor of the mayors riding enforced his claim to the civic terrain. The mayor was preceded by his sword-bearer and accompanied by armed and mounted members of his household -- an imposing (awe-inspiring) array in the narrow streets of the city, and more so when it was supported by the mass bands of infantry that joined the marching watch in the course of the fifteenth century (Lindenbaum 1994: 176). Some Midsummer Watchs included a wicker and canvass giant with moving limbs as if they were alive, representing the perpetual body of the mayor and other important officials (Lindenbaum 1994: 179). Medievalist Brigitte Bedos-Rezak gives evidence that even the act of writing itself was performed as a spectacle in medieval towns (Bedos-Rezak 1994: 42). Even with the advent of written documents, the signing of contracts were announced in public squares to imprint these events on the collective memory and make them authentic. As Bedos-Rezak explains, much of what was set down in writing was still meant to be received by the ear, to be invoked visually as an icon, or to be supplemented by ritual gestures such as touching the towns rod of justice (Bedos-Rezak 1994: 41). The feast was another spectacle that often took place amidst a number of other performances such as the tournament and the court ball. The tournament overlaid onto an exercise whose chief purpose was to train knights for war, complex allegorical plots, poetry and music. The dukes of Burgundy, for example, often included scenes of a woman being kidnapped as a backdrop for the terrific jousts, melees and foot combats that were to follow. These awesome demonstrations of wealth and power through the cult of chivalry, which might include the wheeling in of a mobile forrest in which the combatants would do battle, were intended to intimidate the nobility into staying loyal to the crown (Strong 1984: 16). Court balls were often preceded by the entry of pageant cars holding the host and high officials dressed in elaborate disguises who would dance before the guests. Most of these entertainments were held in public places: The notion of a sperate salle des fetes, let alone a court theater did not exist. That idea in itself embodied a major boundary which was to divide the renaissance festival from its medieval predecessors (Strong 1984: 19). These events, therefore, could instill a sense of wonder to an entire town or city. While I believe the descriptions of these spectacles speak for themselves, I will reiterate how they relate to the subject at hand. From the royal entry to the guild processions to the wheeling in of forests for tournaments, the medieval public spectacle was a vehicle for instilling awe in viewers; the king alone often invoked a sense of wonder. These performances, like the subtlety, were animated and designed to overwhelm all the senses. They relied on conspicuousness to produce wonder in the service of those in power. The spectacles were also meant to be read for messages, political or religious, once the sense of wonder wore off. Finally, the displays were ephemeral entertainments, examples of intense effort and awesome expenditure that were relegated to memory once they were over; their performance could never be repeated in the same way. Their spectacular nature was crucial to ensuring that they would impress themselves on the mind of their audience to carry on their intended effects. They are, therefore, excellent points of comparison to the subtlety. Both are a form of theater and both use entertainment as a tool for political motives. Medieval art, architecture, fashion, and illuminated manuscripts are less appropriate but still useful art-forms to compare with the subtlety; examples of how food can extend medieval art discourse. Food-studies allows those who refute Huizingas claims of decrepitude and decay being the chief attributes of European medieval life to add food served at the dinner table to their argument. However, to leave the subject of subtleties at that would be a disservice to the subtlety as well as to those who disagree with Huizinga. The subtlety is its own genre of performance and explicating how this is so is necessary to add more legitimacy to my claims as well as to the field of medieval studies. Of all the forms of conspicuous consumption, the subtlety has the shortest lifespan. The American Heritage Dictionary defines decadence as a process, condition or period of deterioration. Wealthy households went to great lengths to achieve this process. What is unusual about the subtlety is that the money, time and effort that goes into the realization of a state of deterioration is intended to have the exact opposite effect: to ensure that the position of power held by the host will not be short-lived. Something ephemeral is used in the service of something long-lasting and concrete. Unlike investments in silk robes, jewelry or even a giant basketwork figure of Fortune, food does not accumulate; it spoils, it is destroyed, leaving nothing for posterity. Effort is put into creating an experience rather than an object. In this way, the subtlety is a performance that reverses the meaning of moneys intended purpose: to go a long way. If ostentation, opulence and trumpery are tools for enforcing the ties power, what more can one do than spend money on something that will not last? The presentation of a subtlety is a form of theater that ends with the actors, the set and even the plot being consumed. In the traditional theater, the performance takes place on the stage, across the liminal boundary that separates performer from spectator. In the street spectacle, the street serves as a stage and the performance comes to and then proceeds past the spectators. With a subtlety, the action taking place on a stage, comes to the audience, goes in the audience and then proceeds through the audience; a powerful and highly charged method of communication. At the dinner table, passivity is not an option; the spectator becomes an active participant in the performance. The host relies on this active participation as a means to achieve his goals. Not only is his wealth displayed, it is also eaten. If he is lucky, it will even taste good! The intended political or religious message of the subtlety is also consumed serving as a form of edible handshake tying the guest to the political goals of the host. If the subtlety is spectacular enough, the host will also benefit from his guests consuming wonder, thus collapsing the boundary between the designation of wonder to the material object and the designation of the response to the object; wonder is transferred from the outside to ones inside. The highly charged nature of the subtlety, which crosses the boundaries of the body, is what allows it to serve a political purpose; a peaceful means for the host to dominate his guests. While I will deal with the issue of consumption again later, it is important to note that the subtlety is a unique performance genre in that the action and the viewer become one and the same by curtain call. With worldly troubles ranging from the Black Death to bad crops to the fighting of wars, the Great Hall was a zone of play and pleasure for the host and his guests; the subtlety, an excellent performance genre for creating this sense of leisure. Indeed, the chief purpose of the subtlety is as a source of entertainment and its success in this respect is based on the ingenuity of the chef. Author Lynette Hunter notes that, entangled in the English use of soteltie is the idea of a skilled piece of craft work, as well as an interlude or entremet within a meal included for the purpose of entertainment, and specifically allied with the tradition of disguise or mumming that accompanied the pageants which interspersed the feasts of great occasions throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries (Hunter 1986: 38). The ingenuity needed to create a Cockantrice or a peacock that is really a duck contributes to the feast being a participatory social event that includes conversations about the unusual dishes. Hunter notes the coinciding of the change of venue for the banquet course (to another room) to promote conversation in the fifteenth century with the publication in the vernacular of Platos Symposium (defined as a meeting to exchange ideas after a meal) and Thomas Elyots Banquet of Sapience about wit, aphorism and subtle sayings. The qualities of wit and wisdom associated with the literary banquet, Hunter explains, appear to metamorphose sotil into the more modern sense of subtle through association with the sweetmeat course (Hunter 1986: 39). Witty conversation was to work with the sweetmeats or confectionery subtleties to help the diner digest physically and mentally. Once the effects of wonder wear off, the need for quick wit, humor and subtle sayings represent the transfer of ingenuity from the chef to the guests. The subtlety is creative and prompts creativity; if the chef can make it, the guest should be able to comment on it. Unlike with many other performance genres, the subtlety relies on ingenuity from both the audience and the director in order to be successful. It also depends on a unique form of ingenuity: playing with nature. The ingenuity of the subtlety relies on the assumption that human intervention makes the real more interesting; that the most artificial is better than the most natural. Chefs dedicated much effort to producing food that looks alive: pigs or peacocks in lifelike poses. The subtlety is an example of artificially created naturalness, or mimesis. These dishes are what they are and what they represent. The work that goes into finding an animal, killing it, skinning it, cooking it, seasoning it, redressing it, posing it as it might look if still alive and serving it is a complicated process. In some ways, this process relates to the nature of the subtlety being an ephemeral creation. The irony of expending so much time, effort and money on something that does not last is similar to the irony of spending so much time, effort and money to recreate the very thing that the animal once was. The effect that can be obtained simply by bringing a chicken in from the back yard is obtained through a complex and elaborate process that speaks to the very characteristic of the subtlety itself: so much effort for nothing other than frivolous entertainment. It is difficult to theorize the reasoning behind producing artificial realness but issues of harnessing natures power, controlling it, manipulating it, and displaying it as entertaining performance come to mind. The host benefits from his association of being someone who can control nature; kings were often portrayed as God or Jesus in allegorical street spectacles. The religiously or pseudo-religiously themed subtleties support the view that hosts of feasts hoped to associate themselves with life or cosmic forces. The ages of man subtleties I include in my analysis demonstrate the hosts ability to summarize and harness the life process at his table, drawing parallels between his durable position of power and the natural life process that ends in old age. Consuming this subtlety represents the consuming of time; a transcendent act that unites guest, host and community into a celebration of the existing power structure that the host hopes will last forever. The subtlety is a unique performance in that it uses nature as the means to convey this transcendence. It is also unique in that the money and culinary technology needed to make nature a means of communication can only be afforded by the wealthiest of classes. Unlike wood or basketwork props, food for the subtlety is its own sumptuary law; it is a performance that can only be put up by a select few. The stationary subtlety was intended to be animated in the guests imagination. Chickens were presented riding pigs, boars had fire spewing from their mouths, music emanated from castles housing wild beasts. Sometimes live actors contributed to this sense of animation. Animals that were dead were made to look alive, to take on lifelike poses. In this way, the host was responsible for taking life and then giving it back. These factors support the view of the host as life-giver or even as God who can kill as well as bring the dead back to life. The host is also life- giver and protector to his subjects who rely on his wealth and military might for security. The host gives back life to these animals so that it may be taken away yet again so that it might nourish his followers. In the same way that one consumes the blood and body of Christ with wine and bread, the diners consume the powers of the host. Consumption is the key factor that separates the theater of subtleties from all others. Through consumption everything that characterizes the subtlety becomes one with the person. The entertainment is consumed; wonder is consumed thus enforcing the hosts position of power; the intended message behind the subtlety is consumed bonding to ones insides in the same way the guest becomes bonded with the host and his political or religious goals; ostentation, luxury and spectacle are consumed, as is decadence, transferring the foods destiny from outside to inside the person. Through consumption the boundaries between performer/audience, host/guest, moral/story, man/nature, power/dependency, raw/cooked, credibility/incredibility, heart/mind and object/response are blurred if not utterly collapsed. The same can be said for the boundaries separating the senses which collapse upon consumption. Sight and hearing are distance receptors that spot the subtlety from afar. The nose and sensory organs require proximity to function and are accounted for when the food is served: the nose smelling the subtlety on the plate and the fingers touching the food directly (no forks). The palate then inspects the food, savors it and passes it along to be swallowed. Throughout this entire process the mind works to make sense of it all, categorizing the experience so that it can store it in memory to be recalled at anytime, even thirty years after the event. Huizingas insipid performances are, in reality, a most accomplished form of theater. The Middle Ages witnessed the invention (or rebirth) of a performance genre that literally unites soul, body and community through the consumption of spectacle. Originally conceived as play, as entertainment, as pleasure-producer, the subtlety was such an effective form of theater it was evolved into a preventive weapon. Battles were fought on battlefields and battles were fought in the Great Hall; hatred masked by kindness, swords substituted for ostentatious displays. The subtlety achieved this status because it magnified the best qualities of medieval art-forms by allowing the spectator to actually consume these qualities. In this way, the subtlety is the most radical example of the conspicuous and allegorical trends that define medieval art. In order for the Renaissance, or as the Huizinga school might say, the awakening of Europe from the throws of darkness, to have occurred, the trajectories of medieval life had to come to an end -- to be pushed as far as they can go. A renaissance that explores new art-forms and ways of thinking is much more likely to occur if old ideas have become tired, exhausted, used for all they are worth. In the case of art, medieval trajectories included gradual increases in ostentation. The subtlety, which became progressively more and more complex between the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries (from live animals to ornate castles and ships), was one ingenious means of combining medieval art trends and then improving on them to the point that nothing could improve on it. These creations, because they involve consumption, were the most hardcore example of ostentation; ironically because they have the shortest lifespan. Its cost and ephemerality represented the end of the continuum for conspicuousness; it is impossible to be more decadent (except, perhaps, by burning ones money in the town square). Once the subtlety became common property on noble tables, a revolution was needed. Subtleties, in essence, opened the door by closing it. In this respect, an examination of the subtlety allows us to draw parallels between the fifteenth century and the twentieth century. The end of the Middle Ages witnessed both the exhausting of artistic trajectories as well as a dawning of trajectories that define the Renaissance in the sixteenth century. The same can be said for the twentieth century as it is being lived in the Western World. The only difference between the two periods is that the medieval art-forms involved the physical body while the modern involve the exhausting of ideas behind more virtual art-forms. By the fifteenth century clothing had no room for more jewelry, church facades had been decorated as much as possible, street spectacles could not be more spectacular. No art-form could go further than the conspicuousness achieved by actually consuming these power displays. Today, the same exhausting of possibilities behind art forms has been reached in television and film. Drama in television, for instance, has reached its peak. News shows cannot become more sensationalistic: helicopters and roving news vans are filming actual suicides on Los Angeles highways. Cameras are now permitted in courtrooms relaying real life dramas across the country; how can one get more dramatic than the O.J. Simpson trial? Detective shows like NYPD Blue and Brooklyn South could not be more violent. Shows like Real T.V. and Cops and When Good Times Go Bad are nothing more than random clips of horrible events edited together including clips of people plummeting to their deaths. In the field of lighter entertainments and comedy, M.T.V.s editing technique cannot be made faster. Seinfeld, the number one sitcom for the past decade, has figured out a way to portray random moments in the lives of characters so that no single scene is ever without a joke or gag. Beavis and Butthead and South Park have pushed animation to levels of ludeness and dirty humor that can never be surpassed except through the violation of censure laws. Talk shows like Jerry Springer can only be made more violent if someone actually shoots a person in the head before rolling cameras. In the field of education, nature documentaries on the life of the ostrich or elephant have been replaced by shows like Hunting and Escaping, Fangs, When Animals Attack, The Trails of Life, and Dangerous Encounters. Even the giant squid who spends his days near the ocean floor has had its life portrayed on N.B.C. Almost all the most horrible natural disasters have been caught on film: tornados demolishing houses, hurricanes drowning victims and earthquakes destroying cities are common sites on the Weather Channel. So far, only a tidal wave of Tsunamis dimensions has escaped the cameras lens. But when television can not provide footage, special effects take up the slack. A tidal wave will destroy New York City in theaters around the country when Deep Impact opens in May. If the storm doesnt kill you, the surround sound at the movie theater might. In order to be a bad guy in the movies today you have be a serial killer or want to destroy the world. Walter Matthew no longer cuts it as he did in Charade when he was guilty of stealing a few thousand dollars. He would not put up a good enough fight against Arnold Swartzeneggar or Jean Claude Van Damm, the actors who might be chosen to bring him to justice. The main difference between the Middle Ages and today is that we are exhausting the ideas or the potential behind more art-forms than our predecessors. Criticizing the Middle Ages, then, implies criticizing their lack of technology, something they should hardly be held accountable for. While the twentieth century has seen the number of its art-forms expand, the same process is occurring: the increased theatricalization of its subject matter to the point that it can only be equalled, never surpassed. On the other hand, both time periods represent the dawning of what will come to define the future. The late Middle Ages witnessed the expanding of their horizons through the discovery of new lands, the dawning of international trade, breaking from Church doctrine and the invention of the printing press. The twentieth century has seen the invention of the microchip and the dawning of space travel. These technologies represent the future in the same way their accomplishments represented Europes. In a few thousand years, I believe history textbooks will group the late Middle Ages and the twentieth century in the same chapter: each period exploring the primitive beginnings of what will be taken to new heights in the future as well as exhausting old ideas. Studying late medieval life, therefore, can teach us more than merely what went on five hundred years ago. The time period represents the ending of an era and in that respect it is an amusing example of what happens when ideas are pushed as far as possible. The awesome experiences produced by the subtlety is a subject that deserves more attention in food literature both for how it applies to non food-related art-forms as well as food creations such as the wedding cake. I hope I have laid the foundations for adding subtleties to the field of food studies by explicating how this performance can extend food-related discourse as well as to the discourse of medieval art in general. These performances speak to a forgotten ideal of how powerful a medium theater can be, actually uniting and motivating those involved in its production; a spectacle so spectacular that you can taste it. BIBLIOGRAPHY Attreed, Lorraine 1994 The Politics of Welcome: Ceremonies and Constitutional Development in Later Medieval English Towns; as cited in City and Spectacle in Medieval Europe. Edited by Barbara A. Hanawalt and Kathryn L. Reyerson. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 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