The foods we read and the words we eat : four approaches to the language of food in fiction and nonfiction.

dc.contributor.author Dunne, Sara en_US
dc.contributor.department English en_US
dc.date.accessioned 2014-06-20T16:10:00Z
dc.date.available 2014-06-20T16:10:00Z
dc.date.issued 1994 en_US
dc.description.abstract Food is a common element in both fiction and nonfiction, and critical theory is the best way to understand food as a literary element. Food and critical theory have a long history together, and this study applies structuralism, feminism, the theories of Mikhail Bakhtin, and classical rhetoric to analyze classical and modern fiction and the nonfiction genre of menu writing. en_US
dc.description.abstract Chapter Two focuses on the structuralist theories of the French critic Roland Barthes, whose keen interest in both food and language eventually leads him to assert that food is a language itself which can be decoded through the principles of linguistics and those of binary coding. en_US
dc.description.abstract Chapter Three demonstrates Barthes' theories as applied to the satires of the Roman writer Juvenal. In Juvenal's satires, food signifies power; furthermore, the genre of satire is based in the language of food. en_US
dc.description.abstract Chapter Four applies Barthes' structuralist theories to Bobbie Ann Mason's recent novel In Country. The language of fast food, traditional Southern "slow" food, and some miscellaneous other foods is decoded, using Barthes' theories. en_US
dc.description.abstract Chapter Five discusses the recent feminist theories of Nancy Gray, Helene Cixous and Luce Irigaray. Their theories, opposed to structuralism, are applied to a recent genre, "recipe fiction," in which fictional narrative and referential discourse are combined. en_US
dc.description.abstract The theories of Mikhail Bakhtin as they apply to Fannie Flagg's novel Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe, to Petronius' Satyricon, and to F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby are the focus of Chapter Six. Bakhtin's two major themes of dialogism and the carnivalesque decode the food references in these three works. en_US
dc.description.abstract Finally, classical rhetoric is the tool best suited to analyzing the power transactions in restaurant menu writing. Quintilian and Cicero help us to "read" the words we may eat in this form of persuasive discourse. en_US
dc.description.abstract We eat and speak with the same physical organ, the mouth, so that food and words are intimately connected as parts of human experience. Structuralism, feminism, dialogism, and classical rhetoric help us understand the words we "eat" and the foods we "read.". en_US
dc.description.degree D.A. en_US
dc.identifier.uri http://jewlscholar.mtsu.edu/handle/mtsu/3839
dc.publisher Middle Tennessee State University en_US
dc.subject.lcsh Food in literature en_US
dc.subject.lcsh Literature, Comparative en_US
dc.thesis.degreegrantor Middle Tennessee State University en_US
dc.thesis.degreelevel Doctoral en_US
dc.title The foods we read and the words we eat : four approaches to the language of food in fiction and nonfiction. en_US
dc.type Dissertation en_US
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