TY - JOUR TI - Il gusto della modernità DO - https://doi.org/doi:10.7282/T33F4MQW PY - 2014 AB - 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. KW - Italian KW - Aesthetics KW - National characteristics, Italian KW - National characteristics, Italian, in literature KW - Gastronomy--Italy--History--19th century LA - eng ER -