The Harlequin Eaters with Jane Beizer

Like the Commedia dell’Arte character who wears patchwork clothes, “harlequin” refers to the practice of reassembling a motley of dinner scraps from the plates of the wealthy to sell, replated, to the poor in nineteenth-century Paris. As in her new book, The Harlequin Eaters. Janet Beizer will discuss how the alimentary harlequin evolved from the earlier theatrical figure, and how it can be used to rethink the entangled place of class, race, and food in the longer history of modernism. Through representations of the harlequin from novels, newspapers, photographs, and lithographs, she will show that this mixed meal represents not only food but also the marginalized people—the “harlequin eaters”—who consumed it, and how it relates to today’s problems of food inequity.

Janet Beizer is C. Douglas Dillon Professor of the Civilization of France in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures at Harvard University. She previously taught at the University of Virginia, and she recently held a visiting professorship at I Tatti in Florence. She received her B.A. at Cornell and her M.A., M. Phil., and Ph. D. at Yale. She is a specialist in nineteenth-century literature and culture, with particular expertise in gastronomic history and cultures, medicine and literature, travel writing, and nineteenth-twentieth century women writers. Her avocations include travel, gastronomy, and food justice. She has received training in culinary and wine history and practice, and volunteers with the Boston Area Gleaners.