Description
This volume of essays surveys gastronomy across global
literary modernisms. Modernists explore public and domestic spaces where
food and drink are prepared and served, as much as they create them in the
modernist imagination through narrative, language, verse,
and style. Modernism as a cultural and artistic movement also
highlights the historical politics of food and eating. As the chapters in Gastro-Modernism reveal,
critical trends in food studies alert us to many social concerns that emerge in
the modernist period because of expanding food literacy and culture.
The
result is that food production, consumption, and scarcity are abiding themes in
modernist literature and culture, reflecting tensions amidst colonial,
agricultural, and industrial settings. This timely volume ultimately shows how
global literary modernisms engage with food culture known as gastronomy to
express anxieties about modernity as much as to celebrate the excesses modern
lifestyles produce.
Reviews
‘Contributing to an increasingly expanding field, the essays collected in Gastro-modernism explore the personal, collective, political, historical, and aesthetic role of food in a range of modernist works. Gladwin’s collection constitutes a highly useful and readable resource for students and scholars interested in the insightful, sometimes latent, sometimes overt, but always fascinating intersections and connection between food studies and literary modernist studies.’Maria Christou, University of Manchester, author of Eating Otherwise: The Philosophy of Food in Twentieth Century Literature
‘In Gastro-modernism¸ the
landscapes of literary modernism become fascinating foodscapes, compelling us
to examine its literary, artistic, and epistemic forms anew. There is a lot on
the menu here. The domestic dinner party in Woolf’s writing, the synesthetic
pleasures of Joyce’s prose, the starving artist of Mina Loy’s work, and the
food memoirs of MFK Fisher are only a few of the many offerings. Importantly
for students and scholards of the period, this collection is cognizant of
significant developments in food studies relating to eco-modernism, modernist
gender studies, and postcolonial-modernism, which inform its wide range of
essays. Indeed, Gastro-modernism,
itself an important key term that frames the essays, is sure to change the way
we approach the field at large.’
Gitanjali Shahani, San Francisco State University, author of Tasting Difference and editor of Food and Literature
The emergent modernist food studies which [Gastro-Modernism] represent[s] then is very much of its moment and is a logical next step in our continued critical exploration of the legacy of new modernist studies and its political, cross-cultural, and material turn.
Rebecca Bowler, Modernism/modernity