This volume of essays surveys gastronomy across global
literary modernisms. Modernists explore public and domestic spaces where
food and drink are prepared and served, as much as they create them in the
modernist imagination through narrative, language, verse,
and style. Modernism as a cultural and artistic movement also
highlights the historical politics of food and eating. As the chapters in Gastro-Modernism reveal,
critical trends in food studies alert us to many social concerns that emerge in
the modernist period because of expanding food literacy and culture.
The
result is that food production, consumption, and scarcity are abiding themes in
modernist literature and culture, reflecting tensions amidst colonial,
agricultural, and industrial settings. This timely volume ultimately shows how
global literary modernisms engage with food culture known as gastronomy to
express anxieties about modernity as much as to celebrate the excesses modern
lifestyles produce.