In line with the sustained critical interest in early nineteenth-century discourses of consumption, my article explores the literary fallout of the gastronomic fad, focusing on the representation of food and wine consumption and connoisseurship in Edward Bulwer’s Pelham (1828). Starting from the novel’s biographical and cultural contexts, I survey the dandy gourmand’s special brand of wit, his voluptuous imaginary and the aggressively normative element in gastronomic literature, eventually to tackle the narrative role of Lord Guloseton, as Pelham’s epicurean double. In so doing I underscore the contradictory injunctions (to excess and restraint) that crisscross gastronomic literature, as well as the affinity between the gastronome and the dandy.
«EXQUISITE FOIE-GRAS! HAVE I FORGOTTEN THEE?»: EDWARD BULWER’S PELHAM AND THE GASTRONOMIC FAD
Villa, Luisa
2020-01-01
Abstract
In line with the sustained critical interest in early nineteenth-century discourses of consumption, my article explores the literary fallout of the gastronomic fad, focusing on the representation of food and wine consumption and connoisseurship in Edward Bulwer’s Pelham (1828). Starting from the novel’s biographical and cultural contexts, I survey the dandy gourmand’s special brand of wit, his voluptuous imaginary and the aggressively normative element in gastronomic literature, eventually to tackle the narrative role of Lord Guloseton, as Pelham’s epicurean double. In so doing I underscore the contradictory injunctions (to excess and restraint) that crisscross gastronomic literature, as well as the affinity between the gastronome and the dandy.
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