Anthropophagy in Historical Perspective

Moving from the discussion of two recent books on medieval and early modern anthropophagy [A. A. Montanari, Il fiero pasto. Antropofagie mediveali, Bologna 2015; A. Avramescu, An Intellectual History of Cannibalism, Princeton 2011] this paper analyzes various ways to approach the study of cannibalism from a strictly European point of view, and classify the different uses (nutritional, ritual, "medical") men and women made of their eating of human flesh. The second part of the article focuses on some methodological issues arising from historical narratives and anthropological literature regarding cannibalism, including the contested nature of the evidence, the way in which sources are read, checked and crossed, the ambivalent relationship between texts and images, and the chance to go beyond the conventional chronological and geographical boundaries.