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Pigs in culture

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In literature, both for children and adults, pig characters appear in allegories, comic stories, and serious novels. In art, pigs have been represented in a wide range of media and styles from the earliest times in many cultures. Pig names are used in idioms and animal epithets, often derogatory, since pigs have long been linked with dirtiness and greed, while places such as Swindon are named for their association with swine. The eating of pork is forbidden in Islam and Judaism, but pigs are sacred in some other religions.

Celebration of meat

Classical times

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." 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.

Carnival

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. But the scholars Peter Stallybrass and Allon White comment on the pig's ambiguous role:

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'.

Chinese tradition

In early China pigs were valued not only for eating, but even more for producing fertilizer, as well as fat for lamps, skin for clothing, and bristles for brushes. They also had symbolic value. Aristocrats showed their rank by being entombed with more pigs than were lower ranks. Their ability to grow and reproduce quickly led to pigs being associated with fertility, prosperity, good luck, and a large family. By around the 2nd century C. E. the grave goods in tombs of the wealthy included pig figures, not actual pigs, perhaps to give the departed enough wealth to prosper in the underworld, perhaps to encourage them to bless their descendants. The pig-sty-latrine was common; clay models appear in many Han Dynasty tombs.

"Pig" is one of the twelve signs of the Chinese Zodiac. A folk etymology mistakenly holds that the Chinese character 家, jia (“home” or “family”) shows a pig under a roof, but this is actually a child under a roof. The favorable association explains the mistake.

English tradition

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. 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. Melton Mowbray pork pies were granted PGI status in 2008.

German tradition

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.

Italian tradition

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.

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