Literature and Food Studies (Literature and Contemporary Thought)

"Literature and Food Studies introduces readers to a growing interdisciplinary field by examining literary genres and cultural movements as they engage with the edible world and, in turn, illuminate transnational histories of empire, domesticity, scientific innovation, and environmental transformation and degradation. With a focus on the Americas and Europe, Literature and Food Studies compares works of imaginative literature, from Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale to James Joyce’s Ulysses and Toni Morrison’s Tar Baby, with what the authors define as vernacular literary practices—which take written form as horticultural manuals, recipes, cookbooks, restaurant reviews, agricultural manifestos, dietary treatises, and culinary guides. For those new to its principal subject, Literature and Food Studies introduces core concepts in food studies that span anthropology, geography, history, literature, and other fields; it compares canonical literary texts with popular forms of print culture; and it aims to inspire future research and teaching. Combining a cultural studies approach to foodways and food systems with textual analysis and archival research, the book offers an engaging and lucid introduction for humanities scholars and students to the rapidly expanding field of food studies."--Provided by publisher Cover 1 Half Title 2 Title Page 4 Copyright Page 5 Table of Contents 6 List of Figures 7 Series editors’ preface 8 Acknowledgments 9 1 Introduction: Genealogies and genres of food studies 12 Works cited 23 2 Food routes: Seasonality, abundance, and the mythic garden 28 Mythic origins of seasonal food 29 A literary reversal of seasons and the return to paradise 31 Herbals and kitchen practices 35 Eternal summer in paradise 38 Unseasonal eating and the colonial imagination 40 Notes 47 Works cited 48 3 Virtuous eating: Utopian farms and dietary treatises 52 Epicurean virtue and the conviviality of a commonwealth: Sir Thomas More’s Utopia 54 Failed utopianism: Louisa May Alcott’s satire of the Fruitlands farm 63 Benjamin Franklin’s lapsed vegetarianism 69 Dietary virtue and literary virtuosity: Percy Shelley’s vegetarian pamphlets 72 From virtuous eating to food justice 77 Notes 79 Works cited 80 4 Recipes as vernacular literature: A case study in chocolate 85 The receipt books of early modern Europe 86 Cocao trade and liquid chocolate, from Aztec royalty to Spanish conquistadors 92 The medicinal versus decadent meanings of chocolate 98 Chocolate recipes in the British empire 101 Culinary experimentation and chocolate as a solid food 105 Coda: industrial chocolate and food justice 110 Notes 113 Works cited 114 5 Gustatory narrative: Meals, memory, and modernist fiction 118 Introduction: Meals and memory in Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu 118 The gustatory narrative of Bloom’s meals in Ulysses 120 The dinner party in To the Lighthouse 133 A Book of Salt as a diasporic response to modernist gourmandise 137 Notes 142 Works cited 143 6 Authoring gastronomy: Professional eaters and culinary print culture 147 Discipline and pleasure: the long history of gastronomy 150 The fine art of dining in post-Revolutionary France 155 Elite eaters: the authors of French gastronomy 159 Gastronomy’s gender troubles 165 Counter-gastronomy and culinary satire 166 Notes 173 Works cited 174 Epilogue 179 Works cited 186 Index 188 Literature and Food Studies introduces readers to a growing interdisciplinary field by examining literary genres and cultural movements as they engage with the edible world and, in turn, illuminate transnational histories of empire, domesticity, scientific innovation, and environmental transformation and degradation. With a focus on the Americas and Europe, Literature and Food Studies compares works of imaginative literature, from Ovid's Metamorphoses and Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale to James Joyce's Ulysses and Toni Morrison's Tar Baby, with what the authors define as vernacular literary practices--which take written form as horticultural manuals, recipes, cookbooks, restaurant reviews, agricultural manifestos, dietary treatises, and culinary guides. For those new to its principal subject, Literature and Food Studies introduces core concepts in food studies that span anthropology, geography, history, literature, and other fields; it compares canonical literary texts with popular forms of print culture; and it aims to inspire future research and teaching. Combining a cultural studies approach to foodways and food systems with textual analysis and archival research, the book offers an engaging and lucid introduction for humanities scholars and students to the rapidly expanding fi eld of food studies Literature and Food Studies provides a comparative literary history of the politics of food from the early modern through the contemporary periods. Amy L. Tigner And Allison Carruth. Includes Bibliographical References And Index.