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 33
Page 1
... physical pleasures of the palate to be the pinnacle of aesthetic appreciation . Various " committees of taste " established in early nineteenth- century Britain elevated food to the status of the fine arts , adopting the same juridical ...
... physical pleasures of the palate to be the pinnacle of aesthetic appreciation . Various " committees of taste " established in early nineteenth- century Britain elevated food to the status of the fine arts , adopting the same juridical ...
Page 3
... of sublimating the tasteful essence of selfhood from its own matter and motions, appetites and aversions, passions and physical sensibilities. Above all , what the culture of taste energetically resisted was Aesthetics and Appetite 3.
... of sublimating the tasteful essence of selfhood from its own matter and motions, appetites and aversions, passions and physical sensibilities. Above all , what the culture of taste energetically resisted was Aesthetics and Appetite 3.
Page 6
... Physical motion could be accounted for by means of nerves and muscles , but it was far more difficult to explain the mechanism of mental activity . Hobbes wrote that “ the Schooles find in meere Appetite to go , or move , no actuall ...
... Physical motion could be accounted for by means of nerves and muscles , but it was far more difficult to explain the mechanism of mental activity . Hobbes wrote that “ the Schooles find in meere Appetite to go , or move , no actuall ...
Page 9
... physical gratification . Kant delivered his early thoughts on taste in a series of lectures from 1772 to 1773 , later pub- lished as Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View ( 1798 ) , in which he describes a dinner party of ...
... physical gratification . Kant delivered his early thoughts on taste in a series of lectures from 1772 to 1773 , later pub- lished as Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View ( 1798 ) , in which he describes a dinner party of ...
Page 12
... physical assimilation of the outside world was a leading concern of natural philosophy , sensibility was conceptually involved in the extended economy of digestion . Yet , like the philosophical mystery of what it means to be human ...
... physical assimilation of the outside world was a leading concern of natural philosophy , sensibility was conceptually involved in the extended economy of digestion . Yet , like the philosophical mystery of what it means to be human ...
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