Taste and smell, ingestion and consumption, in Old English literature

Taste and smell have been viewed as secondary senses in the traditional western scholarship, considered as the drivers behind earthly pleasures that engendered gluttonous consumption. This study demonstrates that broader meanings and implications of taste and smell existed in Anglo-Saxon England that extended beyond their primary physiological functions.

Indeed, far from being solely corporeal faculties that were gateways to sin, taste and smell encompassed a diverse array of symbolic and cultural meanings in Old English medical texts and Christian exegetical poems, also revealing a rich and largely unexplored intertextual relationship between medical treatises and poetry.<br><br><i>Thesis is embargoed until 31 July 2029</i>.<br><br>