The collection of Essays simply titled Food: A Culinary History discusses a wide variety of societies, their diets, rituals, and traditions involving food or the act of eating.  One chapter that stood out to me was chapter seven, “Greek Meals: A Civic Ritual.”  Another chapter that seemed to set itself apart from the others was chapter nine, “The Diet of the Etruscans.”  Just from the titles it is clear that these chapters harbor some significant differences, particularly in the focus.  However, these chapters also have some similarities, that go beyond the content of the chapter.  The best way to compare these two excerpts is to examine their focus, structure, and the sources used to write them.

By far the biggest difference between chapters seven and nine are their focuses within the society in question.  Chapter seven discusses the Greeks, while chapter nine discusses their neighbors to the west, the Etruscans.  However, chapter seven is almost entirely focused on the rituals that involved food, particularly banquets, and their effect on the community.  This is known from the author’s thesis, “The Banquet marked a special moment in man’s relationship to the gods, in the relationship of Greek to non-Greek, and in the relationship of citizen to citizen within the Greek city-state” (90).  It is clearly stated that the author’s main purpose for the essay was to discuss the effect of banquets on all types of Greek relationships.  On the other hand, chapter nine is more focused on the specific diet of the Etruscans.  Although the author’s specific thesis is unclear, the focus can be gathered from the subsections of the chapter, which are titled “Cereals”, “Pulses”, “Olives”, “Animal Breeding and Hunting”, “Fishing”, and “Cooking and Banquets”.  As is evident from the headers, the author’s purpose in writing chapter nine was to give information on the specific types of food eaten by the Etruscans, as well as their means of preparation for that food.  Although the chapter does briefly touch on banquets in the Etruscan society, it is not nearly to the same extent as chapter seven.  The difference in content between these two chapters is by far more significant than the others, as proven by the authors’ theses and subsection titles.

Although the content of chapters seven and nine differ so greatly, the structures are surprisingly similar when examined closely.  As discussed previously, chapter nine is split into subsections primarily based off the type of food being analyzed.  The structure is very straight forward; each paragraph is simply a smaller section of the author’s main thesis.  Well, ignoring the content, it is evident that chapter seven also follows this structure. The subsections of this chapter are titled “Banquets of Mortals”, ““Banquets of Greeks”, and “Banquets of Citizens”.  Referring back to the thesis, the first section is geared towards the relationship between man and the gods, the second section discusses the relationship between Greeks and non-Greeks, and the third is about the relationship between Greeks and their community.  Again, the structure consists of paragraphs that break down the thesis into its smaller pieces.  Although this may seem like an insignificant connection between the two papers, it definitely gave them a similar feel while reading them.

The last major point of comparison between the two chapters is the sources used.  Much like the essays themselves, the sources for each were both similar and different.  Both chapters derived most of the information from books, in fact all of chapter seven’s sources were.  However, the author did mix in some historical books such as Aristotle’s Politics.  This adds some credibility to the chapter, and overall contributes quality information to the paper.  She uses Aristotle’s writing to provide the reader with a better idea of when shared meals began, around the time “when the Oenotrians abandoned the pastoral way of life and took up agriculture” (92). On the other hand, the author of chapter nine used many sources, fourteen to be exact, as opposed to the measly seven sources used for chapter seven.  This gives the author a much wider range of information, and different views on the Etruscan’s culture.  Overall, it adds credibility to the author’s statements, that is only rivaled by chapter seven’s historical source.

When it comes down to it, these chapters, although they shared a similar structure, were quite different in terms of content.  After reading them both thoroughly, I definitely felt that the author of chapter seven, Pauline Schmitt-Pantel stuck to her thesis much better than the author of chapter nine, Giuseppe Sassatelli.  Overall, this resulted in chapter seven being much more cohesive and easy to follow, as opposed to nine, which was confusing at times.  There is no question that Pantel did a much better job at getting her point across, which is the main reason I chose these two chapters for comparison.  They prove that two papers can have essentially the same structure and similar topics, yet diverge greatly when it comes to content, sources, and cohesiveness.