Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 1 of 1
Full-Text Articles in American Studies
Reforming Tastes: Taste As A Print Aesthetic In American Cookery Writing, Sarah Wurgler Walden
Reforming Tastes: Taste As A Print Aesthetic In American Cookery Writing, Sarah Wurgler Walden
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Many eighteenth-century philosophers such as Kant and Hume worked to develop discourses of taste as a means of standardizing cultural behaviors. Using physical taste as a metaphor for aesthetic perception and judgment, these writers could both define and abstract group boundaries. As American writers worked to distinguish their nation from their British forebears, many recognized the utility of taste-based discourse and worked to develop cultural tastes around shared principles of egalitarianism and democracy. Cookbooks and domestic writing soon engaged these discourses, as it was the task of women to cultivate a virtuous citizenry, and—through domestic print culture—to demonstrate the deleterious …