In the twelfth to thirteenth centuries there appeared the first manuals teaching “table manners” to the offspring of aristocrats. It was a genre that subsequently had a great success in the early modern period with The Courtier by Baldassare Castiglione, The Galateo by Monsignor Della Casa, and many others produced in different European countries. In a variety of ways and meanings, these are all instruments intended to define or distinguish who is in from who is out, separating the participants from the ostracized. It is for this reason that manuals of “good manners” addressed to the aristocracy always have a negative reference to the peasant who behaves badly, who “doesn’t know” what the rules are, and for this reason is excluded from the lordly table. Food etiquette had become a sign of social barriers and of the impossibility of breaking them down.

* aristocrat: 귀족 ** ostracize: 추방하다