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Cultures of Taste/Theories of Appetite: Eating Romanticism This page intentionally left blank Cultures of Taste/Theories of Appetite: Eating Romanticism Edited by Timothy Morton CULTURES OF TASTE/THEORIES OF APPETITE © Timothy Morton, 2004 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. First published 2004 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN™ 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 and Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, England RG21 6XS Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN 978-0-312-29304-8 ISBN 978-1-4039-8139-4 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9781403981394 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Cultures of taste/theories of appetite / [edited] by Timothy Morton. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-312-29304-8 1. Food habits. 2. Food preferences. 3. Taste. 4. Appetite. 5. Food habits in literature. 6. Dinners and dining in literature. I. Morton, Timothy, 1968– GT2850.C86 2004 394.1Ј2—dc22 2003058081 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First edition: January, 2004 10987654321 Contents List of Illustrations vii Acknowledgments ix Notes on Contributors xi Preface xv Introduction Consumption as Performance:The Emergence of the Consumer in the Romantic Period 1 Timothy Morton Part I Constructions, Simulations, Cultures 19 Chapter 1. William Henry Ireland: From Forgery to Fish ’n’ Chips 21 Nick Groom Chapter 2. The Taste of Paradise:The Fruits of Romanticism in the Empire 41 Timothy Fulford Chapter 3. The Politics of the Platter: Charlotte Smith and the “Science of Eating” 59 Penny Bradshaw Chapter 4. Sustaining the Romantic and Racial Self: Eating People in the “South Seas” 77 Peter J. Kitson Chapter 5. Eating Romantic England:The Foot and Mouth Epidemic and Its Consequences 97 Nicholas Roe vi Contents Part II Waiter, There’s a Trope in My Soup: Close Readings 113 Chapter 6. Hegel, Eating: Schelling and the Carnivorous Virility of Philosophy 115 David L. Clark Chapter 7. Byron’s World of Zest 141 Jane Stabler Chapter 8. Beyond the Inconsumable:The Catastrophic Sublime and the Destruction of Literature in Keats’s The Fall of Hyperion and Shelley’s The Triumph of life 161 Arkady Plotnitsky Part III Disgust, Digestion, Thought 181 Chapter 9. The Endgame of Taste: Keats, Sartre, Beckett 183 Denise Gigante Chapter 10. A “Friendship of Taste”:The Aesthetics of Eating Well in Kant’s Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View 203 Peter Melville Chapter 11. (In)digestible Material: Illness and Dialectic in Hegel’s The Philosophy of Nature 217 Tilottama Rajan Chapter 12. Romantic Dietetics! Or, Eating Your Way to a New You 237 Paul Youngquist Afterword Let Them Eat Romanticism: Materialism, Ideology, and Diet Studies 257 Timothy Morton Index 277 List of Illustrations James Gillray, A Voluptuary under the Horrors of Digestion (London, 1792). Copyright the British Museum, London. xvii James Gillray, Temperance Enjoying a Frugal Meal (London, 1792). Copyright the British Museum, London. xix James Gillray, Substitutes for Bread (London, 1795). Copyright the British Museum, London. 61 James Gillray, Germans Eating Sour-Krout (sic) (London, 1803). Copyright the British Museum, London. 260 This page intentionally left blank Acknowledgments irst and foremost, I would like to thank Denise Gigante for her inspiring and unstinting work on early drafts of this book. Thanks Fto my superb and varied contributors for their constant attention to their work. My discussions with David Clark have been particularly spir- ited and I extend my gratitude to him for his warmth and encouragement. I would like to thank the University of Colorado and in particular the Graduate Committee on the Arts and Humanities for their award of a Faculty Fellowship during the academic year 2001–02, during which I had the chance to do major work on this project. I have also been supported by a generous subvention from the Dean’s Committee on Excellence to help with reproduction costs.This book was seen into production by the consistent expertise of Kristi Long, Melissa Nosal, Rose Raz, and Ian Steinberg. An earlier version of Denise Gigante’s essay was published in Romanticism on the Net (2002) and Studies in Romanticism (2001).An earlier version of Tim Fulford’s essay was published in European Romantic Review (Fall 2000). I would like to thank David Simpson for his unfailing support and cogent, insightful advice. I am grateful to Jeffrey Cox and the Center for the Humanities and the Arts at CU Boulder for their timely invitation to me to present my work for this volume at their work-in-progress seminar: in particular I would like to thank the participants Bud Coleman,Andrew Cowell, Steven Epstein, Bruce Holsinger, and John Stevenson. I would also like to thank Brad Johnson and Alice den Otter. Jamie Oliver’s recipe books provided much of my culinary reading and practice while I was preparing this volume: can I recommend his very fine risottos? Finally, my head and stomach would have come apart long before now if it had not been for the inspiration of my wife Kate, who has worked with me well beyond the call of duty. This page intentionally left blank Notes on Contributors PENNY BRADSHAW is Lecturer in English at St. Martin’s College, Lancaster. She has published articles on women writers of the Romantic period in Women’s Writing and Romanticism on the Net, and has contributed to The Encyclopaedia of the Romantic Era, 1760–1850 (forthcoming). She is currently working on a study of nineteenth-century women writers and Unitarianism. DAVID CLARK is Professor of English Literature at McMaster University. His work includes Regarding Sedgwick: Essays on Queer Culture and Critical Theory (2002), New Romanticisms: Theory and Critical Practice (1994), and Intersections: Nineteenth-Century Philosophy and Contemporary Theory (1994). TIM FULFORD is a professor at Nottingham Trent University.Among his many books are Landscape, Liberty and Authority (1996) and Romanticism and Masculinity (1999). He is the coeditor of Travels, Explorations and Empires,an eight-volume anthology of travel writing from the period 1770–1830. He has also completed the first scholarly edition of Southey’s Thalaha and cowritten a study of Romanticism and Imperial Science. Long-term pro- jects include a book on British perceptions of Native Americans. DENISE GIGANTE, Assistant Professor of English at Stanford, has just completed a book on taste and appetite from Milton through Romanticism, parts of which are available in diacritics (2001) and Studies in Romanticism (2002). NICK GROOM is Reader in English Literature and Director of the Centre for Romantic Studies at the University of Bristol.Among his books are The Making of Percy’s Reliques (1999), Introducing Shakespeare (2001), and The Forger’s Shadow:How Forgery Changed the Course of Literature (2002). He has edited Thomas Chatterton’s poems (2003) and Percy’s Reliques (forth- coming), and is currently again working on the English ballad tradition. xii Notes on Contributors PETER J. KITSON is Chair of English at the University of Dundee. He is the editor of Romantic Criticism, 1800–25 (1989) (with T. N. Corns), Coleridge and the Armoury of the Human Mind: Essays on His Prose Writings (1991), Coleridge, Keats and Shelley: Contemporary Critical Essays (1996) (with Tim Fulford) Romanticism and Colonialism:Writing and Empire, 1780–1830 (1998), and (with Debbie Lee) Slavery,Abolition and Emancipation:Writings in the British Romantic Period (1999). He has published several essays on the relationship between the English and French Revolutions. PETER MELVILLE recently received his Ph.D. from McMaster University. His publications include recent and forthcoming articles in European Romantic Review, Mosaic,The Dalhousie Review, and Arachne. He is currently a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada postdoctoral fellow at Cornell University. TIMOTHY MORTON is Professor of Literature and the Environment at the University of California, Davis. He is author of three books on food and eating: The Poetics of Spice: Romantic Consumerism and the Exotic (Cambridge, 2000); Radical Food: The Culture and Politics of Eating and Drinking, 1780–1830 (Routledge, 2000); and Shelley and the Revolution in Taste:The Body and the Natural World (Cambridge, 1994). He is also coauthor, with Nigel Smith, of Radicalism in British Literary Culture, 1650–1830: From Revolution to Revolution (Cambridge, 2002). ARKADY PLOTNITSKY is Professor of English and a University Faculty Scholar at Purdue University, where he also directs the Theory and Cultural Studies Program. He is the author of several books and many arti- cles on English and European Romanticism, Continental Philosophy, and the relationships among literature, philosophy,and science. His most recent books are The Knowable and the Unknowable: Modern Science, Nonclassical Thought, and the “Two Cultures” (2002), and Reading Bohr: Physics and Philosophy (2004). He is currently completing the book entitled Minute Particulars: Romanticism,