Written in the wake of Byron’s Don Juan and in the run-up to the First Reform Bill and considered as early specimens of a transitional fictional sub-genre negotiating the gap between the Romantics and the Victorians, the so-called silver-fork novels of the 1820s portray upper-class life-style and mores oscillating between satire and fawning admiration. As their very nick-name suggests, they struck their early critics as bent excessively on foregrounding the paraphernalia, victuals and rituals, of ‘fashionable’ conviviality. Though modern academics have failed to address the alimentary aspect of this question specifically, eating and drinking are indeed very prominent in such famous ‘dandy novels’ as Bulwer Lytton’s Pelham or Disraeli’s Vivian Grey and The Young Duke, the gourmet discourse of (Frenchified) food and wines being not just a general index of refinement (a prop to social distinction) but more precisely the preserve of men – rather than ladies – ‘of quality’. Starting from such general premises, my paper focuses on the early fictional works of the young Benjamin Disraeli, highlighting the obsessive recurrence of the eno-gastronomic discourse, its uses and abuses, its light-hearted burlesque connotations as well as its dark ‘gothic’ side and ‘transgressive’ implications.

“Let me die eating ortolans to the sound of soft music!”: Silver-fork Fiction, Intemperate Orality, and the Young Disraeli

L. Villa
2021-01-01

Abstract

Written in the wake of Byron’s Don Juan and in the run-up to the First Reform Bill and considered as early specimens of a transitional fictional sub-genre negotiating the gap between the Romantics and the Victorians, the so-called silver-fork novels of the 1820s portray upper-class life-style and mores oscillating between satire and fawning admiration. As their very nick-name suggests, they struck their early critics as bent excessively on foregrounding the paraphernalia, victuals and rituals, of ‘fashionable’ conviviality. Though modern academics have failed to address the alimentary aspect of this question specifically, eating and drinking are indeed very prominent in such famous ‘dandy novels’ as Bulwer Lytton’s Pelham or Disraeli’s Vivian Grey and The Young Duke, the gourmet discourse of (Frenchified) food and wines being not just a general index of refinement (a prop to social distinction) but more precisely the preserve of men – rather than ladies – ‘of quality’. Starting from such general premises, my paper focuses on the early fictional works of the young Benjamin Disraeli, highlighting the obsessive recurrence of the eno-gastronomic discourse, its uses and abuses, its light-hearted burlesque connotations as well as its dark ‘gothic’ side and ‘transgressive’ implications.
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11567/942390
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