Eating otherwise : the philosophy of food in twentieth-century literature / Maria Christou.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Christou, Maria, 1988- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Food--Philosophy.

Food.

Food in literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (vii, 207 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2017.

Summary:

This book explores the philosophical implications of the popular adage that 'you are what you eat' through twentieth-century literature. It investigates the connections between the alimentary and the ontological: between what or how one eats and what one is. Maria Christou's focus is on two influential modernist figures, Georges Bataille and Samuel Beckett; and two influential postmodernist figures, Paul Auster and Margaret Atwood. She aims to theorize the relationship between modernism and postmodernism from a specifically alimentary perspective. By examining the work of these major twentieth-century authors, this book focuses on strange or unusual acts of eating - 'eating' otherwise - as a means to ways of 'being' otherwise. What can eating tell us about being, about who we are and about our being in the world? This powerful, innovative study takes literary food studies in a new direction.

Contents:

You are what you eat: thinking food otherwise

Georges Bataille's pornographic food

Samuel Beckett's alimentary Cogito

Food, the fall, and the detective: the case of Paul Auster

Food in Margaret Atwood's Dystopias

Modernism, postmodernism, and the otherwise of eating.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 24 Oct 2017).

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

1-108-27065-4

1-108-26610-X

1-108-27156-1

1-108-27338-6

1-108-27704-7

1-108-24200-6

1-108-27429-3