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. |
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Page 48
... Addison's " Pleasures of the Imagination , " published in The Spectator in 1711 and 1712 , are foundational texts of eighteenth - century aesthetics , replacing the immanence of the divine Word with 48 The Century of Taste.
... Addison's " Pleasures of the Imagination , " published in The Spectator in 1711 and 1712 , are foundational texts of eighteenth - century aesthetics , replacing the immanence of the divine Word with 48 The Century of Taste.
Page 49
... Imagination " are based largely on a discussion of Paradise Lost , and when considered against Milton , Shaftesbury seems to have instantiated the philosophical discourse of taste upon the same metaphorical framework as his literary ...
... Imagination " are based largely on a discussion of Paradise Lost , and when considered against Milton , Shaftesbury seems to have instantiated the philosophical discourse of taste upon the same metaphorical framework as his literary ...
Page 51
... imagining an object , or one's own person , but for two senses only , hearing and sight . . . . On the other hand , the discursive way of imagining through the spoken or written word embraces two arts wherein taste can manifest itself ...
... imagining an object , or one's own person , but for two senses only , hearing and sight . . . . On the other hand , the discursive way of imagining through the spoken or written word embraces two arts wherein taste can manifest itself ...
Page 52
... imagination itself . Critics begin to equate ― or , depending on one's point of view , to confuse - imagination with taste , so that the two become nearly inseparable . " 12 Taste , in short , was a guide to creation and the eighteenth ...
... imagination itself . Critics begin to equate ― or , depending on one's point of view , to confuse - imagination with taste , so that the two become nearly inseparable . " 12 Taste , in short , was a guide to creation and the eighteenth ...
Page 58
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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