At that tasted Fruit The Sun, as from
THYESTEAN Banquet, turn'd His course intended; else how had the World Inhabited, though sinless, more then now, Avoided pinching cold and scorching heate?
Calling this a 'dish to feast thy father's gorge', Antonio, with culinary viciousness, alludes to the
Thyestean banquets found in other revenge narratives (48).
The title of the Arnold chapter, "A
Thyestean Banquet of Clap-Trap," refers to Arnold's Friendship's Garland, which originally appeared in 1871, a work that is relatively obscure compared to Culture and Anarchy, published two years earlier.
His topics are a degree of insanity: Samuel Johnson (1709-84), fire from the flint: William Hazlitt (1778-1830), a
Thyestean banquet of clap-trap: Matthew Arnold (1822-88), the principles of modern heresy: T.
As the cannibalism that Pythagoras has been warning against in meat eating--"O spare to make a
Thyestean Meal" (7: 680)--is a symbol of all that is temporal and material, a form of false meaning, so the real presence of the Eucharist is a fundamental metaphor for real meaning because it is eternal, "deathless." Only those who live in the world of the literal--the ruthless, time-bound carnivores--see the real presence as just more meat.