Cannibalism in literature

Jaume Roig's 15th-century novel Espill features a scene in which female innkeepers served men's meat to eat in their Parisian restaurant.

The friendly Arawak tribe described an island of enemies, the "Carib" or "Caniba" depending on translation, who, as Columbus described them, ate men with their monstrous dog snouts.

The target of Swift's satire is the rationalism of modern economics, and the growth of rationalistic modes of thinking at the expense of more traditional human values.

When defending the city of Azov against the Russians, the Turkish soldiers decided to kill and eat the two eunuchs guarding the harem after they had run out of all other provisions.

They wanted to use the women for the same purpose, but "a very pious and humane imam" convinced them to "[o]nly cut off one of the buttocks of each" of them for consumption, thus maiming them but at least sparing their lives.

In his novel Juliette, the heroine meets a gigantic ogre-like Muscovite named Minski who delights in raping and torturing young boys and girls to death before eating them.

He keeps hundreds of children and teenagers as captives in his palace for this purpose, dining daily on their flesh and also serving it to his guests, including Juliette and her companions.

[9] Another man she meets, Brisatesta, tells that together with two other men he once raped a fifteen-year-old boy, afterwards roasting him "alive on the spit and eat[ing] him with relish".

The protagonists of the classic Chinese novel Water Margin engage in "various forms of cannibalism" in addition to "wanton killing" and "excessive retribution".

[18] Bandits run inns where they sell the flesh of those they have robbed and killed to unsuspecting travellers; poor people sleeping alone in the street are at risk of being kidnapped and sold for food to an innkeeper.