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).

In other words, legal transformation spawned the blood, dismemberment, and Thyestean feasts of early modern stage revenge.

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.