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 5
... symbolically regulated , discretionary dining is unique to human beings recurs throughout the Century of Taste.12 Combined with an evolving etiquette and a social imperative for commensality , dining in civilized society involved a ...
... symbolically regulated , discretionary dining is unique to human beings recurs throughout the Century of Taste.12 Combined with an evolving etiquette and a social imperative for commensality , dining in civilized society involved a ...
Page 8
... symbolic power of the dinner table as a site of social communion . Accord- ing to his biographer James Boswell , Johnson described it as a place " to eat and drink together , and to promote kindness . " 23 Nineteenth - century British ...
... symbolic power of the dinner table as a site of social communion . Accord- ing to his biographer James Boswell , Johnson described it as a place " to eat and drink together , and to promote kindness . " 23 Nineteenth - century British ...
Page 10
... symbolic system in which food is “ a highly condensed social fact , ” its significance never purely nutritional.30 ... symbolically vitiated by overindulgence ) nor the poor ( whose objective was merely to eat ) contributed ...
... symbolic system in which food is “ a highly condensed social fact , ” its significance never purely nutritional.30 ... symbolically vitiated by overindulgence ) nor the poor ( whose objective was merely to eat ) contributed ...
Page 17
... a fictional world that anticipates and renders visible the philosophical construction of taste as a symbolic econ- omy of consumption . As Paradise Lost and Regained make clear , the discrimination Aesthetics and Appetite 17.
... a fictional world that anticipates and renders visible the philosophical construction of taste as a symbolic econ- omy of consumption . As Paradise Lost and Regained make clear , the discrimination Aesthetics and Appetite 17.
Page 19
... symbolic economy of consumption , there can be no room for nonproductive expendi- ture : all pleasures that do not lead directly to the propagation of the species ( more workers to perform more work ) are labeled Aesthetics and Appetite 19.
... symbolic economy of consumption , there can be no room for nonproductive expendi- ture : all pleasures that do not lead directly to the propagation of the species ( more workers to perform more work ) are labeled Aesthetics and Appetite 19.
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