TY - JOUR

T1 - Feasts gone wrong. French gastronomical Discourse and literary Counter-models from Rabelais to Perec

AU - Meiner, Carsten

PY - 2022

Y1 - 2022

N2 - Since the seventeenth century, a powerful gastronomical discourse has continuously affirmed the superiority of French gastronomy. The overall argument of this article is that French literature can be considered a critical counter-discourse to the normativity of French gastronomy. French literature, it is argued, de-mythologizes and re-historicizes gastronomical norms and ideals in order to critically examine the political, moral, or gender-related consequences of living in a culture of gastronomical self-idealization. This manifestly ambitious claim is sustained by a methodological concept: the double literary topos. This notion subsumes how French literature stages the conventional and normative dimensions of feasts, and at the same time addresses historically specific critiques of the very normativity of feasts. The article highlights a specific topos – “feasts gone wrong” – used by French literature, from Molière to Houellebecq, to address the moral, psychological and political consequences of living in a culture of normative and self-idealizing gastronomy.

AB - Since the seventeenth century, a powerful gastronomical discourse has continuously affirmed the superiority of French gastronomy. The overall argument of this article is that French literature can be considered a critical counter-discourse to the normativity of French gastronomy. French literature, it is argued, de-mythologizes and re-historicizes gastronomical norms and ideals in order to critically examine the political, moral, or gender-related consequences of living in a culture of gastronomical self-idealization. This manifestly ambitious claim is sustained by a methodological concept: the double literary topos. This notion subsumes how French literature stages the conventional and normative dimensions of feasts, and at the same time addresses historically specific critiques of the very normativity of feasts. The article highlights a specific topos – “feasts gone wrong” – used by French literature, from Molière to Houellebecq, to address the moral, psychological and political consequences of living in a culture of normative and self-idealizing gastronomy.

U2 - 10.1484/J.FOOD.5.131742

DO - 10.1484/J.FOOD.5.131742

M3 - Journal article

VL - 20

SP - 87

EP - 107

JO - Food and History

JF - Food and History

SN - 1780-3187

IS - 2

ER -