Mapping the Tasteland : Explorations in Food and Wine in Argentinean and European Culture

This book draws together the results of extensive research into the complex relationships that some modern European and Argentinean writers have enjoyed with food and wine. The European writers considered include Roland Barthes, Walter Benjamin, Honoré de Balzac, Charles Baudelaire, Italo Svevo, Marcel Schwob, James Joyce and Robert Louis Stevenson; their Argentinean counterparts include Domingo F. Sarmiento, Lucio V. Mansilla, Roberto J. Payró and Ezequiel Martínez Estrada. Through an exploration of both fiction and non-fiction, the author shows how these thinkers’ ideas about food and wine influenced modernity and how they continue to influence contemporary issues such as ‘globalized’ menus and food poverty. Cover 1 Contents 7 Prologue 9 Acknowledgments 13 Translator’s Note 15 Part 1 Taste, Modernity, Centre and Periphery 17 Gourmet Physiology, or the Bourgeois Sorcery of Shapes 19 Food for the Body, Fasting for the Soul 43 Barthes: From the Semiology of Wine to the Empire of the Senses 59 Part 2 Taste, Modernity and Centre I Bordeaux: The Human Condition as Purple Venality 63 Montaigne: The Botrytis and Château d’Yquem 65 Kierkegaard: A Philosophical Diet-et(h)ics and the Truthful Wine of Bordeaux 71 Part 3 Taste, Modernity and Centre II Modernity and its Artificial Paradises 79 Brillat-Savarin, Baudelaire, Marx and Benjamin: From the Order of the Table and its Stimulants to t 81 Hemingway, or the Alcoholic Outpourings of Valpolicella 97 Monogamous Joyce and his Fendant de Sion Wine 103 Svevo, the Unconscious and the Generous Wine of Istria 113 Schwob, Stevenson and the Imaginary History of the Wines of Samos and Bourgogne 121 Part 4 Taste, Modernity and Periphery Argentina: A Corpus of Wine and Food 131 Sarmiento, the Fermentation of the Country and the Preservation of Wine 133 Aldao: Servile Monk and Drinker 149 Mansilla, or Vernacular Sybaritism 157 Payró the Rogue: From the Counterfeiter of Carlón Wine to the Beaujolais of Villefranche 181 The Shadow of Martínez Estrada and his Alimentary Radiography 189 Marie Langer, or the Child as a Peronist Snack 223 Index 239 This book draws together the results of extensive research into the complex relationships that some modern European and Argentinean writers have enjoyed with food and wine. The European writers considered include Roland Barthes, Walter Benjamin, Honore de Balzac, Charles Baudelaire, Italo Svevo, Marcel Schwob, James Joyce and Robert Louis Stevenson; their Argentinean counterparts include Domingo F. Sarmiento, Lucio V. Mansilla, Roberto J. Payro and Ezequiel Martinez Estrada. Through an exploration of both fiction and non-fiction, the author shows how these thinkers' ideas about food and wine i This book explores European and Argentinean writers’ complex relationships with food and wine. It includes examinations of Roland Barthes, Walter Benjamin, Honoré de Balzac, Charles Baudelaire, Italo Svevo, Marcel Schwob, James Joyce, Robert Louis Stevenson, Domingo F. Sarmiento, Lucio V. Mansilla, Roberto J. Payró and Ezequiel Martínez Estrada. This book explores European and Argentinean writers' complex relationships with food and wine. It includes examinations of Roland Barthes, Walter Benjamin, Honore de Balzac, Charles Baudelaire, Italo Svevo, Marcel Schwob, James Joyce, Robert Louis Stevenson, Domingo F. Sarmiento, Lucio V. Mansilla, Roberto J. Payro and Ezequiel Martinez Estrada.