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Delectable structures: Consumption and textuality in the Western tradition
Abstract
Since antiquity western texts have employed representations of consumption to articulate questions of desire and power. Images of eating and drinking serve not only to structure texts but also to question and subvert institutional practices, traditional dichotomies of value, and discourse itself. The primacy of desire is illustrated by a conflation with power that results in a textuality marked by excess. Its two poles are represented by cannibalism and a total refusal to eat; both are forms of absolute desire. Texts dealing with consumption are varied. Theoretical discourse such as Rumohr's Geist der Kochkunst or Brillat-Savarin's Physiologie du gout disrupts traditional notions of genre by equating consumption with discourse. Polysemy and a state of constant metamorphosis are common characteristics of literary texts that concentrate on consumption. Although no unbroken development can be affirmed, earlier works such as Petronius's Satyricon or the Bible emphasize a transcendental aim, while modern ones such as Ror Wolf's Fortsetzung des Berichts stress indeterminacy and the overwhelming presence of death.
Subject Area
Comparative literature|Germanic literature|Romance literature
Recommended Citation
Medeiros, Paulo R, "Delectable structures: Consumption and textuality in the Western tradition" (1990). Doctoral Dissertations Available from Proquest. AAI9110187.
https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations/AAI9110187