Scholars can trace the origins of the cultural field of gastronomy by examining French utopian literature from the turn of the 18th century and beginning of the 19th century. Utopian literature from this period re-situated gourmandise in an Enlightenment discourse focused on sociability and sensuality. It elevated the act of eating to a topic worthy of serious scrutiny and shifted the conversation from food as sustenance to food as pleasure. This article examines culinary consumption in three utopias: Louis-Sébastien Mercier’s L’An 2440, Bernardin de Saint- Pierre’s Paul et Virginie, and Charles Fourier’s Théorie des quatre mouvements et des destinées générals. The culinary utopias which reflect Brillat-Savarin’s Physiologie du goût (1825) the most are not structured around survival, moderation, and reason. Instead, they are defined by emotions, pleasure, and excess. This study borrows from Roland Barthes’ dichotomy between “domestic utopia” and “political utopia” to make sense of this evolution. More so than his predecessors (Mercier and Bernardin de Saint-Pierre), Fourier politicizes the domestic sphere of the kitchen with the purpose of ensuring the right to a minimum standard of sensual pleasure. Despite their differences, the radical mindset developed in all three utopias helped pave the way for gourmandise to become a democratized and celebrated national activity, one that would eventually lead to new cultural figures and professions (the gourmet and food critic).
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I contributed an entry on Voltaire's philosophical novel Candide and an entry on 18th-century writer Antoine-François Prévost d'Exiles.
Excerpt from the entry on Candide:
The richness of Candide lies in the fact that the book reveals popular eighteenth-century philosophical theories, ones which are also linked to the Enlightenment. Another central theme in the story involves the triumph of action over scholarly discourse, the latter which ultimately proves to be inept. Several characters embody the type of false savant hated by Voltaire, especially Candide’s tutor, Pangloss whose mechanical repetitions of the phrase “Tout va bien…” is directly contradicted by the accumulation of misfortunes befalling the characters. Throughout Candide, the narrator mocks characters who think they possess knowledge even though they do not understand its meaning, merely repeating ready-made sentences summarizing philosophical theories and doctrines. Between Pangloss’s optimism and Martin’s pessimism, it is only after having traveled the world and lived through trying experiences that Candide creates his own way of understanding the world. His quest could thus be understood as a search for happiness. In fact, one of the main topics of discussion in salons of the mid-18th century was the possibility of earthly happiness for every man and no longer in a heavenly paradise for a selected few after death.
Excerpt from the entry on Antoine-François Prévost d'Exiles:
This superiority of the sensitive man, the honored hero of the eighteenth-century novel, implies a clear renunciation of the imperatives of seventeenth-century moralist philosophy, which postulated the possibility of controlling the passions by way of the conscience. The equanimity and repose, which characterized the French conception of the honnête homme, gave way to an entirely different virtue, one which could only be acquired by the hardship and trials of multiple excessive passions. It was no longer a matter of being oneself against everything, but of allowing oneself to be invaded and transformed by passion. The legitimacy that Prévost’s novel accords to irrational and paroxysmal behavior, to the spectacular manifestations of sentiment, was entirely new in 1731. In fact, it did not appear as a literary motif until later in the century, and is exemplified in Denis Diderot’s La Religieuse (1780)
To purchase the book go here. I contributed a chapter entitled "La naissance des clubs de gastronomes et le Gesamtkunstwerk gastronomique."
I contributed entries on Paris-based cheese shops. To purchase the book go here.
To read my article on Grimod de La Reynière’s mock funerary feast of 1783 go here.
Men's Journal:
https://www.mensjournal.com/contributor/max-shrem/
AOL's former food blog Slashfood:
http://slashfood56.rssing.com/chan-5124296/all_p1.html
http://nettlemeadow.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/slash-food.pdf