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 42
Page 9
... describes a dinner party of companions " aesthetically united " in pleasure : When I think of companions for a dinner party to be composed solely of men of taste ( aesthetically united ) , who are not only interested in having a meal ...
... describes a dinner party of companions " aesthetically united " in pleasure : When I think of companions for a dinner party to be composed solely of men of taste ( aesthetically united ) , who are not only interested in having a meal ...
Page 17
... describe 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.
... describe 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 18
... describe a masochistic countervision of low - urban taste . Byron uses cannibalism to cri- tique the vampiric forces of nineteenth - century capitalism , and his contem- porary Keats portrays an epic scene of consumption with side ...
... describe a masochistic countervision of low - urban taste . Byron uses cannibalism to cri- tique the vampiric forces of nineteenth - century capitalism , and his contem- porary Keats portrays an epic scene of consumption with side ...
Page 28
... describes an even more graphic evacuation : “ the Mass brings down Christ's holy body from its supreme exaltation at the right hand of God . It drags it back to the earth , though it has suffered every pain and hardship already , to a ...
... describes an even more graphic evacuation : “ the Mass brings down Christ's holy body from its supreme exaltation at the right hand of God . It drags it back to the earth , though it has suffered every pain and hardship already , to a ...
Page 29
... describes creation as the dark obverse of everyday logocentric creation , whereby " his word all things produc'd " ( PR 3.122 ) : a divine expul- sion or cosmic purgation of waste . This newly made , symbolic world of cre- ation may ...
... describes creation as the dark obverse of everyday logocentric creation , whereby " his word all things produc'd " ( PR 3.122 ) : a divine expul- sion or cosmic purgation of waste . This newly made , symbolic world of cre- ation may ...
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