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Literature and Food Studies introduces readers to a growing interdisciplinary field by examining literary genres and cultural movements as they engage with the edible world and, in turn, illuminate transnational histories of empire, domesticity, scientific innovation, and environmental transformation and degradation. With a focus on the Americas and Europe, Literature and Food Studies compares works of imaginative literature, from Ovid's Metamorphoses and Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale to James Joyce's Ulysses and Toni Morrison's Tar Baby, with what the authors define as vernacular literary practices-which take written form as horticultural manuals, recipes, cookbooks, restaurant reviews, agricultural manifestos, dietary treatises, and culinary guides. For those new to its principal subject, Literature and Food Studies introduces core concepts in food studies that span anthropology, geography, history, literature, and other fields; it compares canonical literary texts with popular forms of print culture; and it aims to inspire future research and teaching.
Combining a cultural studies approach to foodways and food systems with textual analysis and archival research, the book offers an engaging and lucid introduction for humanities scholars and students to the rapidly expanding field of food studies.
List of contents
List of Figures Series Editor Preface Acknowledgments 1. Introduction: Genealogies and genres of food studies 2. Food routes: Seasonality, abundance, and the mythic garden 3. Virtuous eating: Utopian farms and dietary treatises 4. Recipes as vernacular literature: A case study in chocolate 5. Gustatory narrative: Meals, memory, and modernist fiction 6. Authoring gastronomy: Professional eaters and culinary print culture Epilogue Index
About the author
Amy L. Tigner is Associate Professor of Early Modern Studies in the English Department at the University of Texas, Arlington, USA.
Allison Carruth is Associate Professor in the English Department, Institute for Society and Genetics, and Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at the University of California, Los Angeles, USA, where she is the director of the Laboratory for Environmental Narrative Strategies (LENS).
Summary
Literature and Food Studies provides a comparative literary history of the politics of food from the early modern through the contemporary periods.
