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What remains of the Platonic Banquet, more than two thousand years after its publication? The model established by Plato, associating meals and philosophical discussion, has spread throughout literature to the point of becoming a favourite subject combining two joint pleasures, that of the mind – through words and the art of conversation – and that of the body – through the pleasures of the taste buds. Better still, we talk gastronomy, we evaluate dishes, we distil succulence. The aim of this volume is not so much to measure Plato's legacy in literature as to grasp the multiple metamorphoses of the motif of the literary banquet in its subtle association with debates on ideas. From the sixteenth to the twentieth century, the journey offered on the menu will thrill diners, from the risk of cannibalism to the most refined debates led by dandies or theorists of gastronomy and cooking: the banquet reveals itself to be both subject and object, a reflection of its era, a mirror of the palate and of artists' fantasies. For if appetite comes from eating, it also comes from disserting.

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