2014 Daniele De Feo ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

248 Pages·2014·1.7 MB·English

by  Dan De Feo

© 2014

Daniele De Feo

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
IL GUSTO DELLA MODERNITÀ: AESTHETICS, NATION, AND THE
LANGUAGE OF FOOD IN 19TH CENTURY ITALY
By
DANIELE DE FEO

A
 dissertation
 submitted
 to
 the

Graduate
 School-­‐New
 Brunswick

Rutgers,
 The
 State
 University
 of
 New
 Jersey

In
 partial
 fulfillment
 of
 the
 requirements

For
 the
 degree
 of

Doctor
 of
 Philosophy

Graduate
 Program
 in
 Italian

Written
 under
 the
 direction
 of

Professor
 Paola
 Gambarota

And
 approved
 by

_______________________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________

New
 Brunswick,
 New
 Jersey

January,
 2014
ABSTRACT
 OF
 THE
 DISSERTATION

IL GUSTO DELLA MODERNITÀ: AESTHETICS, NATION, AND THE LANGUAGE
OF FOOD IN 19TH CENTURY ITALY

By
 DANIELE
 DE
 FEO

Dissertation
 Director

Professor
 Paola
 Gambarota

My dissertation “Il Gusto della Modernità: Aesthetics, Nation and the Language
of Food in 19th century Italy,” explores the cohesive pedagogic and nationalistic attempt
to define Italian taste during the instability of an unificatory Italy. Initiating with an
establishing European taste paradigm (e.g. Feuerbach, Fourier, Brillat-Savarin), my
research demonstrates that there is an increasing number of works composed within the
developing “Italian” context, which reflects and participates in the construction and the
consumption of a national identity (e.g., Rajberti, Mantegazza, Guerrini, Artusi).
Conversely, this budding taste genre finds itself in sharp contrast to the economic paucity
and social divisiveness endured by a large sector of the populace and depicted by the
literature of the day (e.g., Collodi, Verga, Serao). It is precisely this lack of confluence
between that which is scientific and literary that marks this process of taste ennoblement
and indoctrination, defining more than ever the nuances that encompass il gusto italiano.

ii
Acknowledgements
I am extremely grateful for my years at Rutgers and I cannot express how
privileged I feel to have been surrounded by the people with whom I have had the fortune
to study and work throughout the years. I cannot help but think of my family, without
whose steadfast love and support this project would have never been completed. In
particular, I thank my wife, Rosa, for her eternal patience, constant emotional support and
important input. To my parents, Aldo and Antonietta, who have been, and continue to be
pillars of strength for my family and me. To my aurora, I dedicate this work. May I
teach you how to taste in the way my parents taught me.
I am indebted to Professor Paola Gambarota, my advisor, whose dedication to the
successful completion of my study was/is crucial. She wholeheartedly supported my topic
and nurtured me throughout the process (and my career) with lucid insight, fundamental
feedback and care. To the members of my committee: to Professor Laura S. White, by
whom I was inspired to pursue a study on gastronomy, I am truly grateful for her
continued interest in my work and career as well as her constant support and guidance
throughout the years; to Professor Andrea Baldi, whose precise comments and meticulous
reading were essential and provided an excellent model for this project and beyond, I am
truly appreciative. I would also like to thank my external reader, Professor David Del
Principe, for his availability, enthusiasm and warmth. I extend many thanks to the rest of
the faculty: to Professor Alessandro Vettori for his invaluable advice, unyielding
encouragement and for the privilege of his collaboration; to Professor David Marsh for
his overall congeniality and for serving as an endless fount of knowledge; and to
Professor Rhiannon Welch who provided moral support through the final stages.
ii
 i
A very special mention to Carol Feinberg and Robin Rogers, who have have been
and continue to be the mainstays of the department, and for whose generosity and care I
will always be grateful. Additionally, I have studied and worked with many colleagues
throughout my years here. I can sincerely say that without their collaboration, help,
consideration and kindness, I would never have felt as home as I do in the department.
At Rutgers I have had the great fortune of finding people who believe in me and
in my work, and who have nurtured me all along the way— for this I shall be eternally
appreciative.

iv
Table of contents:

Abstract………………………………………………………….. ii

Acknowledgements………………………………………………iii

1. Introduction ………………………………………………….. 1
Taste, gusto, goût, Geschmack,… / Food as art? / Gastronomie / Gastronomie crosses
the channel / Gastrosophy / E la cucina? / A scientific art and an artful science: an
Italian literature of gastronomy

2. Medics in the Kitchen: Giovanni Rajberti and Paolo Mantegazza ……..36
The preface of all Rajbertian prefaces / From Dantean steak to meatballs: Rajberti’s
Italian art of conviviality / Food science as philosophy of thought: 1850 / The Italian
didactic gastronome: Paolo Mantegazza / Gastronoma?: the role of women in the newly
founded ideals of taste

3. Literati in the Kitchen: Olindo Guerrini and Pellegrino Artusi ………...90
An ebbrezza of taste: La tavola e la cucina nei secoli XIV e XV and Frammento di un
libro di cucina del secolo XIV / The Artusi Effect / Guerrini’s L’arte di utilizzare gli
avanzi

4. Idealistic Science and Realistic Literature ………………………………149
I. The sacerdoti di Epicuro: Rajberti, Mantegazza and Guerrini’s Literary
Manifestations of Taste…….149
Grapes, a Venetian Painter, and a Cat: Food and Art in Giovanni Rajberti’s Satire /
Anthropology as Fiction and Utopia: The Food Aesthetics of Mantegazza the Novelist /
From the Altar to the Tavern: Guerrini as the Verist Gastrosopher

II. From Pasta Water to Moldy Bread: Nutrition and Literature in Post-
Unification…………….…..181
The malessere alimentare / Black bread for antiheros / Pasta nerastra for the popolino
/ La fame non ha capricci né ghiottonerie!

Conclusions ……………………………………………………………... 213
National cuisine? / An Italian aesthetics of food
v
List of Illustrations:

Cover of Olindo Guerrini’s L’arte di utilizzare gli avanzi ………………...148

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1

Chapter 1
Introduction
Bonnes à manger, bonnes à penser
-Claude Lèvi-Strauss

Philosophy, art and food, how do they merge? Through taste. Taste is a term that
encompasses a wide scope of connotations simultaneously bridging and expanding the
breach between these fields throughout the centuries. Yet, aside from taste’s polysemous
nature, one notion is clear: there is a fundamental relationship between places and tastes.
Whether we define peoples by food, fashion, art, or philosophies, the taste of a people
defines territories. Therefore, nationalists who sought to merge diverse vernacular
traditions did so by appealing to cuisine as a non-menacing cultural unifier.1 As
respective bourgeoisies sought to diffuse a sense of national identity, gastronomic
literature surged and along with it, promulgated notions of country. Cuisine then is not
only the simple manipulation of food; it is language, art, science, but also tradition,
agriculture, and terroir. Cuisine is identity, and yet whether national cuisines exist is an
important question. Imagined as national communities may be, as Benedict Anderson
has noted, it can be contended that national cuisines are but artifices for the food practices
of a collection of people within arbitrary boundaries. Nevertheless, it is of great
significance that along with national construction, there is taste refinement.
The dissertation will focus on tracing the advent of this modern theoretical and
philosophical ideal of taste, finding a thread that initiates in France, England and
Germany before moving to Risorgimento Italy. It is this period that sees a proliferation

1
 This is a European pattern that can easily be traced to France, England and Italy, but also to postcolonial
nations, who default to European cultural patterns. See Jeffery Pilcher’s discussion of postcolonial cuisines
in Food in World History, New York: Routledge, 2006.
2

of texts that focus on the development of taste through cuisine, its hygiene and the
analysis of its social ramifications. As consequence, these issues enter the literary
discourse of the period with food becoming emblematic of a particular social reality.
Food here becomes revelatory of a multitude of worlds that reshape text and context, and
the form and function of these many gastronomic identities create a narrative that
positions the individual squarely within the body politic of this time. It becomes an agent
of power or oppression, as well as a means of exchange and community. It is indicative
of archetypes and paradigms that permeate the modern consciousness, precisely in a
period in which what it means to “eat Italian” begins to form what it means to be Italian.
Whether as desire or transgression, whether corporal or spiritual— the representation of
food becomes an integral part of the attempt to create an italianità. The period during
which Italy becomes a nation (at least politically speaking) is precisely when it strives
towards a definition of taste.

Taste, gusto, goût, Geschmack,…
Before beginning our literary narrative of taste, it is important to understand the
complexities associated with the word itself. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary has
sixteen listed definitions for taste, while Garzanti has twelve listed for the nominal and
verbal forms of gusto. Consequently, we are dealing with a term that has come to
encompass a multitude of concepts throughout the ages, both scientific and artistic,
ephemeral and sublime. It is a term laced with incongruities and contradictions,
concurrently pertaining to the jargon of aesthetes as well as to the language of the
commoner, connoting both cognition and corporeality. We will focus on two main uses
3

of the word: taste, in its literal significance, indicating one of the five human senses, or,
rather, man’s gustatory perception; and taste as metaphor, or as aesthetic sensitivity.
According to Douglas B. Light, the most important aspect to our sense of taste is
that it allows us to determine whether the items we place in our mouth should be
swallowed or rejected. He, in fact, points to the Latin origin of the term, taxare, which
has as one of its meanings “to judge”(34), underlining its discriminating quality and
permitting a possible metaphoric use of the term. There are various opinions as to when
the term was first actually applied to aesthetic discernment. Anthony Blunt attributes one
of the first uses to Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472).2 Others cite Balthasar Gracian y
Morales’(1601-1658) description of elevated taste as the first application of the term,3 or
even William Caxton’s (1415-1492) use of the term to mean “the fact or condition of
liking or preferring something.”4 Origin notwithstanding, Voltaire (1694-1778) helps
corroborate a fundamental point: aesthetic philosophy finds basis in taste as sense.
This sense, this capacity for discriminating between different foods, had given
rise, in all known languages, to the metaphorical use of the word ‘taste’ to
designate the discernment of beauty and flaws in all the arts. It discriminates as
quickly as the tongue and the palate, and like the physical taste it anticipates
thought.5

2
 See: Artistic Theory in Italy. 1450-1600, Oxford: Oxford Univerisity Press, 1990. The quote he produces
is as follows: “Many… say that our ideas of beauty and architecture are wholly false, maintaining that the
forms of buildings are various and changeable according to the taste of each individual and not dependent
on any rules of art. This is a common error of ignorance, to maintain that what it does not know does not
exist.”

3
 See, The Lost Secrets of Fame and Fortune: How to Get and Keep Everything You Desire, Translated by
Joseph Jacobs, Los Angeles :Mega Niche, 2009, 74.
4
 See: Melville, Peter, “A ‘Friendship of Taste”: The Aesthetics of Eating Well in Kant’s Anthropology
from a Pragmatic Point of View” in Cultures of Taste/Theories of Appetite: Eating Romanticism, Edited by
Morton, Timothy, New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2004. P 203.
5
 See: d'Alembert, Jean Le Rond, Denis Diderot, Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de La Brède et de
Montesquieu, and François-Marie Arouet de Voltaire. "Taste." The Encyclopedia of Diderot & d'Alembert
Collaborative Translation Project. Translated by Nelly S. Hoyt and Thomas Cassirer. Ann Arbor:
MPublishing, University of Michigan Library, 2003. Trans. of "Goût," Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire
raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, vol. 7. Paris, 1757.
Thomas Reid similarly (1710-1769) writes: