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 22
Page 1
... considered the profoundly physical pleasures of the palate to be the pinnacle of aesthetic appreciation . Various " committees of taste " established in early nineteenth- century Britain elevated food to the status of the fine arts ...
... considered the profoundly physical pleasures of the palate to be the pinnacle of aesthetic appreciation . Various " committees of taste " established in early nineteenth- century Britain elevated food to the status of the fine arts ...
Page 3
... considered a matter of individual choice, and the so-called Man of Taste had to navigate an increasing tide of consumables, seeking distinction through the exercise of discrimination.∂ An overdetermined, multivalenced concept ...
... considered a matter of individual choice, and the so-called Man of Taste had to navigate an increasing tide of consumables, seeking distinction through the exercise of discrimination.∂ An overdetermined, multivalenced concept ...
Page 11
... considered the organ of taste , was housed in the head but extended all the way down through the digestive tract to the anal orifice , an organ of unsignifying emission opposed to the expression of taste . As Stanley Cavell remarks in ...
... considered the organ of taste , was housed in the head but extended all the way down through the digestive tract to the anal orifice , an organ of unsignifying emission opposed to the expression of taste . As Stanley Cavell remarks in ...
Page 16
... considered outside it . The Metaphor of Taste The aesthetic field of vision and hearing may yield a vaguely ideal- immaterial subjectivity , but the senses of touch , taste , and smell demand an actual self engaged in the world of ...
... considered outside it . The Metaphor of Taste The aesthetic field of vision and hearing may yield a vaguely ideal- immaterial subjectivity , but the senses of touch , taste , and smell demand an actual self engaged in the world of ...
Page 47
... considered as the quintessence of almost all the arts and sciences . The fine ladies and gentlemen dress with Taste ; the architects , whether Gothic or Chinese , build with Taste ; the painters paint with Taste ; the poets write with ...
... considered as the quintessence of almost all the arts and sciences . The fine ladies and gentlemen dress with Taste ; the architects , whether Gothic or Chinese , build with Taste ; the painters paint with Taste ; the poets write with ...
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 |
Other editions - View all
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