Shelley and the Revolution in Taste: The Body and the Natural World (Cambridge Studies in Romanticism, Series Number 10)

"This book brings together the themes of diet, consumption, the body, and human relationships with the natural world, in a highly original study of Shelley. A campaigning vegetarian and proto-ecological thinker, Shelley may seem to us curiously modern, but Morton offers an illuminatingly broad context for Shelley's views in eighteenth-century social and political thought concerning the relationships between humanity and nature. The book is at once grounded in the revolutionary history of the period 1790-1820, and informed by current theoretical issues and anthropological and sociological approaches to literature. Morton provides challenging new readings of much-debated poems, plays, and novels by both Percy and Mary Shelley, as well as the first sustained interpretation of Shelley's prose on diet. With its stimulating literary-historical reassessment of questions about nature and culture, this study will provoke fresh discussion about Shelley, Romanticism, and modernity."--Pub. desc. This groundbreaking study addresses the representation of food and drink in the works of Percy and Mary Shelley. With original studies of much-debated texts, it provides new perspectives in recent cultural history and theory concerning medicine and diet in the 1790SH1820 period. Morton shows how food in the social and literary text provided complex and ambivalent ways of signaling ideological preferences. It will appeal to all those interested in the body, ecology and social and anthropological approaches to Romantic literature. This ground-breaking study addresses the representation of food and drink in the works of Percy and Mary Shelley. With original studies of much-debated texts, it provides new perspectives in recent cultural history and theory concerning medicine and diet in the 1790-1820 period. Morton shows food in the social and literary text provided complex and ambivalent ways of signalling ideological preferences. It will appeal to all those interested in the body, ecology and social and anthropological approaches to Romantic literature. This book brings together the themes of diet, consumption, the body, and human relationships with the natural world, in a highly original study of the poet Shelley, a campaigning vegetarian and proto-ecological thinker. Morton offers an illuminatingly broad context for his views in eighteenth-century social and political thought concerning the place of humans in nature, culture, and society.

a Highly Original Study Of Shelley's Thought In Relation To Diet, Consumption, The Body, Nature, And Culture.