© 2014 Daniele De Feo ALL RIGHTS RESERVED IL GUSTO DELLA MODERNITÀ: AESTHETICS, NATION, AND THE LANGUAGE OF FOOD IN 19TH CENTURY ITALY By DANIELE DE FEO A dissertation submitted to the Graduate School-New Brunswick Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey In partial fulfillment of the requirements For the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Program in Italian Written under the direction of Professor Paola Gambarota And approved by _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________ New Brunswick, New Jersey January, 2014 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION IL GUSTO DELLA MODERNITÀ: AESTHETICS, NATION, AND THE LANGUAGE OF FOOD IN 19TH CENTURY ITALY By DANIELE DE FEO Dissertation Director Professor Paola Gambarota My dissertation “Il Gusto della Modernità: Aesthetics, Nation and the Language of Food in 19th century Italy,” explores the cohesive pedagogic and nationalistic attempt to define Italian taste during the instability of an unificatory Italy. Initiating with an establishing European taste paradigm (e.g. Feuerbach, Fourier, Brillat-Savarin), my research demonstrates that there is an increasing number of works composed within the developing “Italian” context, which reflects and participates in the construction and the consumption of a national identity (e.g., Rajberti, Mantegazza, Guerrini, Artusi). Conversely, this budding taste genre finds itself in sharp contrast to the economic paucity and social divisiveness endured by a large sector of the populace and depicted by the literature of the day (e.g., Collodi, Verga, Serao). It is precisely this lack of confluence between that which is scientific and literary that marks this process of taste ennoblement and indoctrination, defining more than ever the nuances that encompass il gusto italiano. ii Acknowledgements I am extremely grateful for my years at Rutgers and I cannot express how privileged I feel to have been surrounded by the people with whom I have had the fortune to study and work throughout the years. I cannot help but think of my family, without whose steadfast love and support this project would have never been completed. In particular, I thank my wife, Rosa, for her eternal patience, constant emotional support and important input. To my parents, Aldo and Antonietta, who have been, and continue to be pillars of strength for my family and me. To my aurora, I dedicate this work. May I teach you how to taste in the way my parents taught me. I am indebted to Professor Paola Gambarota, my advisor, whose dedication to the successful completion of my study was/is crucial. She wholeheartedly supported my topic and nurtured me throughout the process (and my career) with lucid insight, fundamental feedback and care. To the members of my committee: to Professor Laura S. White, by whom I was inspired to pursue a study on gastronomy, I am truly grateful for her continued interest in my work and career as well as her constant support and guidance throughout the years; to Professor Andrea Baldi, whose precise comments and meticulous reading were essential and provided an excellent model for this project and beyond, I am truly appreciative. I would also like to thank my external reader, Professor David Del Principe, for his availability, enthusiasm and warmth. I extend many thanks to the rest of the faculty: to Professor Alessandro Vettori for his invaluable advice, unyielding encouragement and for the privilege of his collaboration; to Professor David Marsh for his overall congeniality and for serving as an endless fount of knowledge; and to Professor Rhiannon Welch who provided moral support through the final stages. iii A very special mention to Carol Feinberg and Robin Rogers, who have have been and continue to be the mainstays of the department, and for whose generosity and care I will always be grateful. Additionally, I have studied and worked with many colleagues throughout my years here. I can sincerely say that without their collaboration, help, consideration and kindness, I would never have felt as home as I do in the department. At Rutgers I have had the great fortune of finding people who believe in me and in my work, and who have nurtured me all along the way— for this I shall be eternally appreciative. iv Table of contents: Abstract………………………………………………………….. ii Acknowledgements………………………………………………iii 1. Introduction ………………………………………………….. 1 Taste, gusto, goût, Geschmack,… / Food as art? / Gastronomie / Gastronomie crosses the channel / Gastrosophy / E la cucina? / A scientific art and an artful science: an Italian literature of gastronomy 2. Medics in the Kitchen: Giovanni Rajberti and Paolo Mantegazza ……..36 The preface of all Rajbertian prefaces / From Dantean steak to meatballs: Rajberti’s Italian art of conviviality / Food science as philosophy of thought: 1850 / The Italian didactic gastronome: Paolo Mantegazza / Gastronoma?: the role of women in the newly founded ideals of taste 3. Literati in the Kitchen: Olindo Guerrini and Pellegrino Artusi ………...90 An ebbrezza of taste: La tavola e la cucina nei secoli XIV e XV and Frammento di un libro di cucina del secolo XIV / The Artusi Effect / Guerrini’s L’arte di utilizzare gli avanzi 4. Idealistic Science and Realistic Literature ………………………………149 I. The sacerdoti di Epicuro: Rajberti, Mantegazza and Guerrini’s Literary Manifestations of Taste…….149 Grapes, a Venetian Painter, and a Cat: Food and Art in Giovanni Rajberti’s Satire / Anthropology as Fiction and Utopia: The Food Aesthetics of Mantegazza the Novelist / From the Altar to the Tavern: Guerrini as the Verist Gastrosopher II. From Pasta Water to Moldy Bread: Nutrition and Literature in Post- Unification…………….…..181 The malessere alimentare / Black bread for antiheros / Pasta nerastra for the popolino / La fame non ha capricci né ghiottonerie! Conclusions ……………………………………………………………... 213 National cuisine? / An Italian aesthetics of food v List of Illustrations: Cover of Olindo Guerrini’s L’arte di utilizzare gli avanzi ………………...148 vi 1 Chapter 1 Introduction Bonnes à manger, bonnes à penser -Claude Lèvi-Strauss Philosophy, art and food, how do they merge? Through taste. Taste is a term that encompasses a wide scope of connotations simultaneously bridging and expanding the breach between these fields throughout the centuries. Yet, aside from taste’s polysemous nature, one notion is clear: there is a fundamental relationship between places and tastes. Whether we define peoples by food, fashion, art, or philosophies, the taste of a people defines territories. Therefore, nationalists who sought to merge diverse vernacular traditions did so by appealing to cuisine as a non-menacing cultural unifier.1 As respective bourgeoisies sought to diffuse a sense of national identity, gastronomic literature surged and along with it, promulgated notions of country. Cuisine then is not only the simple manipulation of food; it is language, art, science, but also tradition, agriculture, and terroir. Cuisine is identity, and yet whether national cuisines exist is an important question. Imagined as national communities may be, as Benedict Anderson has noted, it can be contended that national cuisines are but artifices for the food practices of a collection of people within arbitrary boundaries. Nevertheless, it is of great significance that along with national construction, there is taste refinement. The dissertation will focus on tracing the advent of this modern theoretical and philosophical ideal of taste, finding a thread that initiates in France, England and Germany before moving to Risorgimento Italy. It is this period that sees a proliferation 1 This is a European pattern that can easily be traced to France, England and Italy, but also to postcolonial nations, who default to European cultural patterns. See Jeffery Pilcher’s discussion of postcolonial cuisines in Food in World History, New York: Routledge, 2006. 2 of texts that focus on the development of taste through cuisine, its hygiene and the analysis of its social ramifications. As consequence, these issues enter the literary discourse of the period with food becoming emblematic of a particular social reality. Food here becomes revelatory of a multitude of worlds that reshape text and context, and the form and function of these many gastronomic identities create a narrative that positions the individual squarely within the body politic of this time. It becomes an agent of power or oppression, as well as a means of exchange and community. It is indicative of archetypes and paradigms that permeate the modern consciousness, precisely in a period in which what it means to “eat Italian” begins to form what it means to be Italian. Whether as desire or transgression, whether corporal or spiritual— the representation of food becomes an integral part of the attempt to create an italianità. The period during which Italy becomes a nation (at least politically speaking) is precisely when it strives towards a definition of taste. Taste, gusto, goût, Geschmack,… Before beginning our literary narrative of taste, it is important to understand the complexities associated with the word itself. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary has sixteen listed definitions for taste, while Garzanti has twelve listed for the nominal and verbal forms of gusto. Consequently, we are dealing with a term that has come to encompass a multitude of concepts throughout