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 20
Page 1
... qualities of beauty and to pro- nounce exact judgments of taste , the Romantic gourmand worked with equal aesthetic imperative to distinguish among different flavors of food.∞ Yet I 1. Aesthetics and Appetites: An Introduction.
... qualities of beauty and to pro- nounce exact judgments of taste , the Romantic gourmand worked with equal aesthetic imperative to distinguish among different flavors of food.∞ Yet I 1. Aesthetics and Appetites: An Introduction.
Page 18
... gourmands at the turn of the century had become respectable members of civil society and even leaders in public taste under the ... gourmand as a distinct cultural figure , an up- to - date Man of Taste in a public scene of conspicuous ...
... gourmands at the turn of the century had become respectable members of civil society and even leaders in public taste under the ... gourmand as a distinct cultural figure , an up- to - date Man of Taste in a public scene of conspicuous ...
Page 19
... gourmand , however , whose tasteful status hinged on moderation , Lamb figured forth an avid eater who swings between the alternate extremes of savage carnivore and sickly - delicate connoisseur . Essays like " Edax on Ap- petite ...
... gourmand , however , whose tasteful status hinged on moderation , Lamb figured forth an avid eater who swings between the alternate extremes of savage carnivore and sickly - delicate connoisseur . Essays like " Edax on Ap- petite ...
Page 82
You have reached your viewing limit for this book.
You have reached your viewing limit for this book.
Page 82
You have reached your viewing limit for this book.
You have reached your viewing limit for this book.
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