[Sca-cooks] Rotten meat and spices...

[Robin Carroll-Mann]

el2iot2 at mail.com wrote:

>Do not literary sources ,by need, be taken with a grain of salt?  
>  
>
Yes, and that's been mentioned several times.

>Young Dodger from Oliver Twist is hardly a proper representation of Victorian England as a whole. 
>  
>
No, but he might be a useful example if you were discussing street children.

>It is usually the extremes of society that are written.  Why write down what everyone knows?  
>  
>
Fiction often deals with ordinary people.  Jane Austen wrote about the 
gentry of the English countryside.  Chaucer's pilgrims are nearly all 
what we would call working-class or middle-class.  Fiction is not as 
reliable as say, menus and household account books, but it can give you 
a starting point for discussion, if we assume that Chaucer was 
describing a "typical" poor widow and her circumstances.

>Joy
>Radei 
>
-- 
Brighid ni Chiarain
Barony of Settmour Swamp, East Kingdom
Robin Carroll-Mann *** rcmann4 at earthlink.net