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 27
... living bread which , Christ says , is his flesh , and the true drink which , he says , is his blood , can only be the doctrine which teaches us that Christ was made man in order to pour out his blood for us . . . . Whereas if we eat his ...
... living bread which , Christ says , is his flesh , and the true drink which , he says , is his blood , can only be the doctrine which teaches us that Christ was made man in order to pour out his blood for us . . . . Whereas if we eat his ...
Page 39
... living Bread which , Christ says , is his flesh " ( YP 6 : 553 ) . For Milton , both Satan and Son are created , and both play a role in creation.54 The crucial distinction is that the Son recognizes his status as part of the made world ...
... living Bread which , Christ says , is his flesh " ( YP 6 : 553 ) . For Milton , both Satan and Son are created , and both play a role in creation.54 The crucial distinction is that the Son recognizes his status as part of the made world ...
Page 41
... living . In this context , the banquet Satan presents to the Son in book 2 of Paradise Lost appeals to a courtly ethic of immoral indulgence.59 Charles Lamb interprets it as the " severest satire upon full tables and surfeits ...
... living . In this context , the banquet Satan presents to the Son in book 2 of Paradise Lost appeals to a courtly ethic of immoral indulgence.59 Charles Lamb interprets it as the " severest satire upon full tables and surfeits ...
Page 45
... living bread , " or the one who by becoming a sacrifice ( an ejected , rejected member ) enables that economy in the first place ? Milton ingeniously averts this moral dilemma by proscribing his supple- mentary Son to an outside that ...
... living bread , " or the one who by becoming a sacrifice ( an ejected , rejected member ) enables that economy in the first place ? Milton ingeniously averts this moral dilemma by proscribing his supple- mentary Son to an outside that ...
Page 57
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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