From Rabelais's celebration of wine to Proust's madeleine and Virginia
Woolf's boeuf en daube in To the Lighthouse, food has figured
prominently in world literature. But perhaps nowhere has it played such
a vital role as in the Italian novel. In a book flowing with
descriptions of recipes, ingredients, fragrances, country gardens,
kitchens, dinner etiquette, and even hunger, Gian-Paolo Biasin examines
food images in the modern Italian novel so as to unravel their function
and meaning. As a sign for cultural values and social and economic
relationships, food becomes a key to appreciating the textual richness
of works such as Lampedusa's The Leopard, Manzoni's The Betrothed,
Primo Levi's Survival in Auschwitz, and Calvino's Under the Jaguar
Sun. The importance of the culinary sign in fiction, argues Biasin, is
that it embodies the oral relationship between food and language while
creating a sense of materiality. Food contributes powerfully to the
reality of a text by making a fictional setting seem credible and
coherent: a Lombard peasant eats polenta in The Betrothed, whereas a
Sicilian prince offers a monumental macaroni timbale at a dinner in
The Leopard. Similarly, Biasin shows how food is used by writers to
connote the psychological traits of a character, to construct a story by
making the protagonists meet during a meal, and even to call attention
to the fictionality of the story with a metanarrative description.
Drawing from anthropology, psychoanalysis, sociology, science, and
philosophy, the author gives special attention to the metaphoric and
symbolic meanings of food. Throughout he blends material culture with
observations on thematics and narrativity to enlighten the reader who
enjoys the pleasures of the text as much as those of the palate.
Originally published in 1993.
The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand
technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from
the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions
preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting
them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the
Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich
scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by
Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
