Matters of taste: Eating, aesthetics, and American identity, 1720--1865
Item
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Title
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Matters of taste: Eating, aesthetics, and American identity, 1720--1865
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Identifier
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d_2009_2013:c6af08196564:11043
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identifier
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11282
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Creator
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Klein, Lauren Frederica,
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Contributor
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David S. Reynolds
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Date
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2011
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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American literature | American studies | food | identity | nation | race | taste
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Abstract
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"Matters of Taste" demonstrates how leading cultural, political, and literary figures from the late colonial era through the Civil War viewed the cultivation of the American palate, like the cultivation of aesthetic taste, as essential to shaping a democratic citizenry. Reading texts ranging from Thomas Jefferson's emancipation agreement with his personal chef, James Hemings, to Nathaniel Hawthorne's metaphorical presentation of The House of the Seven Gables as a "dish offered to the Public," I document the emergence of a distinctly American sense of taste, one that is composed of moral and political, as well as aesthetic criteria. I argue that this composite sense of taste expresses the republican ideals associated with the nation's formation, and at the same time, incorporates its enduring contradictions of race, gender, and class. By offering a cultural history of American taste that originates in the act of eating, I hope to expand the narrative of the nation's founding to acknowledge the influence of foods such as Indian corn and figures such as Hemings, as well as written works that reveal the relation of good taste to good citizenship. In so doing, I also hope to open American aesthetic discourse to a more inviting---and flavorful---form of cultural inquiry.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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2009_2013.csv
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degree
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Ph.D.
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Program
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English
