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 3
... social structures of 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 ...
... social structures of 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 ...
Page 4
... social construct of selfhood dependent on how human beings process experience through the senses . Once the flesh was involved in the formation of selfhood , identity could not be explained away on Cartesian principles as a disembodied ...
... social construct of selfhood dependent on how human beings process experience through the senses . Once the flesh was involved in the formation of selfhood , identity could not be explained away on Cartesian principles as a disembodied ...
Page 5
... social animal , ” as the philosopher William Godwin remarked in An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice ( 1793 ) .10 As a social animal , man doesn't just eat : he dines . Anthropologists today confirm that while human beings have much ...
... social animal , ” as the philosopher William Godwin remarked in An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice ( 1793 ) .10 As a social animal , man doesn't just eat : he dines . Anthropologists today confirm that while human beings have much ...
Page 8
... social necessity of controlling one's appetite in public : When seated at the board you take your place , Invited by his honour , or his grace ; Though hungry , when you view the fowl or fish , Seem nice , and only piddle o'er the dish ...
... social necessity of controlling one's appetite in public : When seated at the board you take your place , Invited by his honour , or his grace ; Though hungry , when you view the fowl or fish , Seem nice , and only piddle o'er the dish ...
Page 9
... social community that transcended physical gratification . Kant delivered his early thoughts on taste in a series of ... social enjoyment for which the dinner must appear only as a vehicle ( AN 187 ) . In this Kantian vision of ...
... social community that transcended physical gratification . Kant delivered his early thoughts on taste in a series of ... social enjoyment for which the dinner must appear only as a vehicle ( AN 187 ) . In this Kantian vision of ...
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