Eating the enlightenment [electronic resource] : food and the sciences in Paris, 1670-1760 / E. C. Spary.

ISBN:

9780226768885

Title:

Author:

Spary, E. C. (Emma C.)

Personal Author:

Spary, E. C. (Emma C.)

Publication Information:

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2013.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (380 p.)

General Note:

Description based upon print version of record.

Contents:

Contents; List of Illustrations; Acknowledgments; Introduction; 1. Intestinal Struggles; 2. From Curiosi to Consumers; 3. The Place of Coffee; 4. Distilling Learning; 5. The Philosophical Palate; 6. Rules of Regimen; Conclusion; Bibliography; Index

Subject Term:

Diet -- France -- Paris -- History -- 18th century.

Enlightenment -- France -- Paris -- History -- 18th century.

Gastronomy -- France -- Paris -- History -- 18th century.

Nutrition -- France -- Paris -- History -- 18th century.

Paris (France) -- Intellectual life -- 18th century.

Format:

Electronic Resources

Electronic Access:

Click here to view book

Publication Date:

2013

Publication Information:

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2013.

Available:*

Shelf Number	Material Type	Copy	Shelf Location	Status
394.120944 SPA	1:E-BOOK	1	1:ONLINE	Searching... Unknown

Bound With These Titles

On Order

Summary

Eating the Enlightenment offers a new perspective on the history of food, looking at writings about cuisine, diet, and food chemistry as a key to larger debates over the state of the nation in Old Regime France. Embracing a wide range of authors and scientific or medical practitioners--from physicians and poets to philosophes and playwrights--E. C. Spary demonstrates how public discussions of eating and drinking were used to articulate concerns about the state of civilization versus that of nature, about the effects of consumption upon the identities of individuals and nations, and about the proper form and practice of scholarship. En route, Spary devotes extensive attention to the manufacture, trade, and eating of foods, focusing upon coffee and liqueurs in particular, and also considers controversies over specific issues such as the chemistry of digestion and the nature of alcohol. Familiar figures such as Fontenelle, Diderot, and Rousseau appear alongside little-known individuals from the margins of the world of letters: the draughts-playing café owner Charles Manoury, the "Turkish envoy" Soliman Aga, and the natural philosopher Jacques Gautier d'Agoty. Equally entertaining and enlightening, Eating the Enlightenment will be an original contribution to discussions of the dissemination of knowledge and the nature of scientific authority.

Author Notes

E. C. Spary is a lecturer in the Faculty of History at the University of Cambridge. She is the author of Utopia's Garden: French Natural History from Old Regime to Revolution and coeditor of Materials and Expertise in Early Modern Europe: Between Market and Laboratory , both published by the University of Chicago Press.

Reviews (1)

Choice Review

Spary's history of the literary, scientific, and material culture of food and drink in 18th-century Paris is a timely book, amply demonstrating that the present cacophony of often-conflicting scientific advice regarding diet and nutrition is no recent development. Her interest is in the way networks of knowledge creators staked claims to authority or challenged the claims of other self-styled experts. Focusing on the creation of knowledge about food allows Spary (Cambridge) to show how literate Parisians did so in the absence of credentialing institutions. Indeed, the achievement of her book is to show how alimentary discourse linked together literary society, recently created scientific academies, habits of consumption, commerce, and national identity. Chapters on theories of digestion, coffee and alcohol consumption, and the nutritional lives of philosophes all turn up unexpected links between networks of knowledge and the place of food in urban life. This significant contribution to the historiography of the Enlightenment should interest a wide variety of scholars of the 18th century. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students and up. J. W. McCormack University of Notre Dame