Pigs in culture

The scholar Michael MacKinnon writes that "Pork was generally considered the choicest of all the domestic meats consumed during Roman times, and it was ingested in a multitude of forms, from sausages to steaks, by rich and poor alike. No other animal had so many Latin names (e.g. sus, porcus, porco, aper) or was the ingredient in so many ancient recipes as outlined in the culinary manual of Apicius."[1] Pigs have been found at almost every archaeological site in Roman Italy; they are described by Roman agricultural writers such as Cato and Varro, and in Pliny the Elder's Natural History. MacKinnon notes that ancient breeds of pig can be seen on monuments such as the Arch of Constantine, which portrays a lop-eared, fat-bellied, and smooth breed.[1]

Benton Jay Komins, a scholar of culture, notes that the pig has been celebrated throughout Europe since ancient times in its carnivals, the name coming from the Italian carne levare, the lifting of meat.[2] Komins quotes the scholars Peter Stallybrass and Allon White on the pig's ambiguous role:[2]

"In the fair and the carnival, we would expect to find a quite different orientation toward the pig: in 'carne-levare' the pig was celebrated; the pleasures of food were represented in the sausage and the rites of inversion were emblematized in the pig's bladder of the fool. ... Even in the carnival the pig was the locus of conflicting meanings. If the pig was duly celebrated, it could also become the symbolic analogy of scapegoated groups and demonized 'Others'".[3]

A Melton Mowbray pork pie

In England, pork pies were being made in Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire by the 1780s, according to the Melton Mowbray Pork Pie Association (founded in 1998). The pies were originally baked in a clay pot with a pastry cover, developing to their modern form of a pastry case. Local tradition states that farm hands carried these while at work; aristocratic fox hunters of the Quorn, Cottesmore and Belvoir hunts supposedly saw this and acquired a taste for the pies.[4][5] A slightly later date of origin is given by the claim that pie manufacture in the town began around 1831 when a local baker and confectioner, Edward Adcock, started to make pies as a sideline.[6] Melton Mowbray pork pies were granted PGI status in 2008.[7]

German cities such as Nuremberg have made pork sausages since at least 1315 AD, when the Würstlein (sausage controller) office was introduced. Some 1500 types of sausage are produced in the country. The Nuremberg bratwurst is required to be at most 90 millimetres (3.5 in) long and to weigh at most 25 grams (0.88 oz); it is flavoured with mace, pepper, and marjoram. In Early Modern times starting in 1614, Nuremberg's butchers paraded through the city each year carrying a 400 metres (440 yd) long sausage.[8]

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  The Bratwurst Glöcklein ("Little-bell sausages"), Germany's most renowned inn of the time, founded in Nuremberg in the 14th century. The inn was destroyed in the Second World War. 1914 postcard.[8]
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  A range of Bratwurst grilled sausages at the main market in Nuremberg

The pig, and pork products such as mortadella, were economically important in Italian cities such as Bologna and Modena in the Early Modern period, and celebrated as such; they have remained so into modern times. In 2019, the Istituzione Biblioteche Bologna held an exhibition Pane e salame. Immagini gastronomiche bolognesi dalle raccolte dell'Archiginnasio ("Bread and salami. Bolognese gastronomic images from the Archiginnasio collection") on the gastronomic images in its collection.[9][10]

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  La Vera Historia della Piacevolissima Festa Della Porchetta ("The True History of the Most Pleasant Feast of the Little Pig") by Giulio Cesare Croce, Bologna, 1599
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  Canzone Sopra La Porcellina ("Song Upon the Piglet") by Giulio Cesare Croce, Bologna, 1622
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  Dichiarazione del Bando delle Mortadelle ("Declaration of the Band of the Mortadellas"), Bologna, 1661
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  Gli Elogi del Porco ("The Praises of the Pig"), Modena, 1761
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  Hams, pigs' trotters, sausages, and mortadella in Bologna, 2019

The Story of the Learned Pig by an Officer of the Royal Navy, 1786

Pigs have appeared in literature with a variety of associations, ranging from the pleasures of eating, as in Charles Lamb's A Dissertation upon Roast Pig, to William Golding's Lord of the Flies (with the fat character "Piggy"), where the rotting boar's head on a stick represents Beelzebub, "lord of the flies" being the direct translation of the Hebrew בעל זבוב, and George Orwell's allegorical novel Animal Farm, where the central characters representing Soviet leaders are pigs.[2][11][12][13] The pig is used to comic effect in P. G. Wodehouse's stories set in Blandings Castle, where the eccentric Lord Emsworth keeps an extremely fat prize pig called the Empress of Blandings which is frequently stolen, kidnapped or otherwise threatened.[11][14] Quite a different use is made of the pig in Lloyd Alexander's fantasy books The Chronicles of Prydain, where Hen Wen is a pig with foresight, used to see the future and locate mystical items such as The Black Cauldron.[15]

One of the earliest literary references comes from Heraclitus, who speaks of the preference pigs have for mud over clean water in the Fragments.[16] Plato in the Republic discusses a "healthy state" of simplicity as "a city for pigs" (Greek: huōn polis).[17] In Wu Cheng'en's 16th-century Chinese novel Journey to the West, Zhu Bajie is part human, part pig.[18] In books, poems and cartoons in 18th-century England, The Learned Pig was a trained animal who appeared to be able to answer questions.[19] Thomas Hardy describes the killing of a pig in his 1895 novel Jude the Obscure.[20]

Pigling Bland setting out on his adventures

Pigs have featured in children's books since at least 1840, when Three Little Pigs appeared in print;[21] the story has appeared in many different versions such as Disney's 1933 film and Roald Dahl's 1982 Revolting Rhymes. Even earlier is the popular 18th-century English nursery rhyme and fingerplay, "This Little Piggy",[22] frequently in film and literature, such as the Warner Brothers cartoons A Tale of Two Kitties (1942) and A Hare Grows In Manhattan (1947) which use the rhyme to comic effect. Two of Beatrix Potter's "little books", The Tale of Pigling Bland (1913) and The Tale of Little Pig Robinson (1930), feature the adventures of pigs dressed as people.[11]

Several animated cartoon series have included pigs as prominent characters. One of the earliest pigs in cartoon was the gluttonous "Piggy", who appeared in four Warner Brothers Merrie Melodies shorts between 1931 and 1937, most notably Pigs Is Pigs, and was followed by Porky Pig, with similar habits.[23]

Piglet is Pooh's constant companion in A. A. Milne's Winnie the Pooh stories and the Disney films based on them, while in Charlotte's Web, the central character Wilbur is a pig who formed a relationship with a spider named Charlotte.[24] The 1995 film Babe humorously portrayed a pig who wanted to be a herding dog, based on the character in Dick King-Smith's 1983 novel The Sheep Pig.[25] Among new takes on the classic Three Little Pigs is Corey Rosen Schwartz and Dan Santat's 2012 The Three Ninja Pigs.[26]