Ejercicio Texto B - Preguntas 1-4 · Inglés PAU Asturias Extraordinaria 2022

TEXTO B: The history of table manners

In a painting by the 18th-century French artist Jean Baptiste Chardin, two young children are sitting down to eat. Their table is set in the kitchen of a great house, with pots and pans hanging on the walls, but it is elegantly laid. There is a cloth on the table, and two grand chairs for the children to sit at as they use their silver cutlery under a maid's supervision. It is 1740 and they are learning to eat. Or rather, they are learning table manners. Where does food end and etiquette begin? Eating is a physical need, but meals are a social ritual. In 2022 we celebrate the 161st anniversary of Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management, a guidebook about the wonderful world of table manners, first published in 1861. In many ways it is a very modern book: “the lady begins to serve the soup, starting with the gentleman on her right and on her left, and continuing in the same order until everyone is served. It is generally established as a rule not to ask for soup or fish twice, because if you do so, part of the company may be kept waiting for the second course.” In fact, Mrs Beeton's rules were the culmination of hundreds of years of changing manners. The children learning their table etiquette in Chardin's 1740 painting are in the vanguard of a cultural revolution. Cutlery, as opposed to eating with your fingers; sitting up straight in a high-backed chair; these were innovations in the way people defined themselves at table in 18th-century Europe. Europeans in the Middle Ages had had little ceremony when it came to food; their manners consisted of making sure they didn't get too greasy when tearing meat with their fingers. Today, it might seem we have returned to medieval manners; barbecued wings and legs eaten with your hands, burgers, pizza... often eaten in front of the TV. And yet, in truth, table manners shape our lives as firmly as the lives of those children painted by Chardin in 1740: we still consider table manners to be essential to a 'proper' meal.

QUESTIONS. Do not copy literally from the text. (1 punto por respuesta = 4 puntos)

1.

What does the 1740 painting by the French artist Jean Baptiste Chardin show?

2.

What is so special about Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management in 2022?

3.

Why is the painting considered a representation of the front line of a cultural revolution?

4.

What eating habits today resemble those of the Middle Ages?