Taste: A Literary HistoryWhat does eating have to do with aesthetic taste? While most accounts of aesthetic history avoid the gustatory aspects of taste, this book rewrites standard history to uncover the constitutive and dramatic tension between appetite and aesthetics at the heart of British literary tradition. From Milton through the Romantics, the metaphor of taste serves to mediate aesthetic judgment and consumerism, gusto and snobbery, gastronomes and gluttons, vampires and vegetarians, as well as the philosophy and physiology of food.The author advances a theory of taste based on Milton’s model of the human as consumer (and digester) of food, words, and other commodities—a consumer whose tasteful, subliminal self remains haunted by its own corporeality. Radically rereading Wordsworth’s feeding mind, Lamb’s gastronomical essays, Byron’s cannibals and other deviant diners, and Kantian nausea, Taste resituates Romanticism as a period that naturally saw the rise of the restaurant and the pleasures of the table as a cultural field for the practice of aesthetics. |
From inside the book
Results 1-5 of 43
Page 5
... claimed . “ The trick of the monkey using the cat's paw to roast a chestnut , is only a piece of shrewd malice in that ... claims to dis- tinction . Romantic epicureans and aesthetic philosophers alike stressed the importance of taste ...
... claimed . “ The trick of the monkey using the cat's paw to roast a chestnut , is only a piece of shrewd malice in that ... claims to dis- tinction . Romantic epicureans and aesthetic philosophers alike stressed the importance of taste ...
Page 9
... claimed that he " could write a better book of cookery than has ever yet been written . . . upon philosophical principles . " Rather than leaving the body behind for the pur- poses of aesthetic contemplation , the connoisseur by the end ...
... claimed that he " could write a better book of cookery than has ever yet been written . . . upon philosophical principles . " Rather than leaving the body behind for the pur- poses of aesthetic contemplation , the connoisseur by the end ...
Page 10
... claim for part of it . " 34 Coleridge himself contemplated emigrating to America owing to " the diffi- culty of procuring sustenance in this Country " and leaving behind " England a place where the laborious poor are dying with grass ...
... claim for part of it . " 34 Coleridge himself contemplated emigrating to America owing to " the diffi- culty of procuring sustenance in this Country " and leaving behind " England a place where the laborious poor are dying with grass ...
Page 12
... claim . . . . The digested matter in the stomach is conducted by pipes , as by the bowels of the animal , to the anus , where there is a sphincter that allows it to exit . " 41 Those physicians who judged humans by their physiological ...
... claim . . . . The digested matter in the stomach is conducted by pipes , as by the bowels of the animal , to the anus , where there is a sphincter that allows it to exit . " 41 Those physicians who judged humans by their physiological ...
Page 15
... claimed is " not the product of art . " In classical aesthetics , smell and taste produce no mental activity , and for Aristotle , therefore , “ the arts of the perfumer and cook are the arts of pleasure . " 48 His hierarchy ranked ...
... claimed is " not the product of art . " In classical aesthetics , smell and taste produce no mental activity , and for Aristotle , therefore , “ the arts of the perfumer and cook are the arts of pleasure . " 48 His hierarchy ranked ...
Contents
1 | |
22 | |
47 | |
4 Digesting Wordsworth | 68 |
5 Lambs LowUrban Taste | 88 |
Byron | 116 |
7 Keatss Nausea | 138 |
George IV | 160 |
Notes | 180 |
Index | 228 |
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Common terms and phrases
aesthetic taste animal appetite arts beauty Bernard Mandeville bodily body bread British Burke Burke's Byron Cambridge cannibalism carnivorous century Charles Lamb civilizing Clarendon Press Coleridge connoisseur consumer consumerism critical critique culinary diet digestion dinner Don Juan dregs E. V. Lucas economy of consumption Edax eighteenth-century Elia England English Essay Fall of Hyperion feast feeding mind flesh flesh-eating French Freud gastronomical George Grimod gustatory gusto Harold Bloom human Hume hunger ideal James Gillray John Keats Keats's Lakes Lamb's letter London low-urban taste Mandeville Mandeville's meal Medusa metaphor middle-class Milton moral nature nineteenth-century object organ Oxford palate Paradise Lost Paradise Regained philosophical physiology pleasure poem poet poetic poetry political Prelude Roast Pig Romantic Romanticism Satan satire sense sexual Shaftesbury Shelley shipwreck smell Snowdon social society stomach sublime symbolic economy Thomas tion trans University Press vampire vegetarian vols William words Wordsworth writes York