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
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Page
... permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources . I 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Contents Acknowledgments vii List of Abbreviations ix I. Aesthetics and Contents.
... permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources . I 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Contents Acknowledgments vii List of Abbreviations ix I. Aesthetics and Contents.
Page 3
... production, consumption is 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 ...
... production, consumption is 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 ...
Page 11
... production of eyes , ears , nose , and then the more problematic organ of taste , reaching out from the belly : “ A craving Hungry Cavern / Thence arose his channeld Throat , / And like a red flame a Tongue ” ( CPB 76 ) . The tongue ...
... production of eyes , ears , nose , and then the more problematic organ of taste , reaching out from the belly : “ A craving Hungry Cavern / Thence arose his channeld Throat , / And like a red flame a Tongue ” ( CPB 76 ) . The tongue ...
Page 12
... production of tasteful subjects . Before modern medicine made probing beyond the subjective border of skin a less problematic venture , physicians relied on what was evacuated or ex- pelled from the organism to determine its internal ...
... production of tasteful subjects . Before modern medicine made probing beyond the subjective border of skin a less problematic venture , physicians relied on what was evacuated or ex- pelled from the organism to determine its internal ...
Page 15
... produce no mental activity , and for Aristotle , therefore , “ the arts of the perfumer and cook are the arts of pleasure . " 48 His hierarchy ranked visual arts , music , and poetry at the top ; cookery and other feminized crafts ...
... produce no mental activity , and for Aristotle , therefore , “ the arts of the perfumer and cook are the arts of pleasure . " 48 His hierarchy ranked visual arts , music , and poetry at the top ; cookery and other feminized crafts ...
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