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Technological University Dublin

Arts and Humanities

Gastrocriticism

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Defining Gastrocriticism As A Critical Paradigm On The Example Of Irish Literature And Food Writing: A Vade Mecum, Anke Klitzing Dec 2023

Defining Gastrocriticism As A Critical Paradigm On The Example Of Irish Literature And Food Writing: A Vade Mecum, Anke Klitzing

Doctoral

The aim of this study is to map out the gastrocritical approach, using Irish literature and writing to test its premises, and to provide a vade mecum for its practical application, particularly for interdisciplinary scholars. The gastrocritical approach furnishes a “culinary lens” for reading food and foodways in imaginative texts, informed by work in the field of food studies and gastronomy. The approach was broadly characterised by Tobin in 2002, but only sparsely used since. The past fifteen years have seen an increasing self-awareness and reflexivity in the field of literary food studies. As the field matures, there have been …


‘Gilded Gravel In The Bowl’: Ireland’S Cuisine And Culinary Heritage In The Poetry Of Seamus Heaney, Anke Klitzing Aug 2021

‘Gilded Gravel In The Bowl’: Ireland’S Cuisine And Culinary Heritage In The Poetry Of Seamus Heaney, Anke Klitzing

Articles

Seamus Heaney’s poetry is rich in detail about agricultural and food practices in his native Northern Ireland from the 1950s onwards, such as cattle-trading, butter-churning, eel-fishing, blackberry-picking or home-baking. Often studied from an ecocritical perspective, the abundance of agricultural and culinary scenes in Heaney’s work makes a gastrocritical focus on food and foodways suitable. Food has been recognized as a highly condensed social fact, and writers have long tapped into its multi-layered meanings to illuminate socio-cultural circumstances, making literature a valuable ethnographic source. A gastrocritical reading of Heaney’s work from 1966 to 2010, drawing on Rozin’s Structure of Cuisine, shows …


Food And The Irish Short Story Imagination, Anke Klitzing Jul 2021

Food And The Irish Short Story Imagination, Anke Klitzing

Articles

Short fiction is a format heartily embraced by the Irish literary imagination since the nineteenth century. This paper takes a gastrocritical approach to investigate the role of food in selected stories from the recently published anthology The Art of the Glimpse (2020). It shows that through the years, food and foodways have been valuable tools for Irish writers, providing setting and context, themes and symbols, plot points, conflicts, characterisation, as well as the quintessential epiphanies.


My Palate Hung With Starlight: A Gastrocritical Reading Of Seamus Heaney’S Poetry, Anke Klitzing Dec 2019

My Palate Hung With Starlight: A Gastrocritical Reading Of Seamus Heaney’S Poetry, Anke Klitzing

Articles

Nobel-prize winning poet Seamus Heaney is celebrated for his rich verses recalling his home in the Northern Irish countryside of County Derry. Yet while the imaginative links to nature in his poetry have already been critically explored, little attention has been paid so far to his rendering of local food and foodways. From ploughing, digging potatoes and butter-churning to picking blackberries, Heaney sketches not only the everyday activities of mid-20th century rural Ireland, but also the social dynamics of community and identity and the socio-cultural symbiosis embedded in those practices. Larger questions of love, life and death also infiltrate the …