Taste, perhaps the most intimate of the five senses, has
traditionally been considered beneath the concern of philosophy,
too bound to the body, too personal and idiosyncratic. Yet, in
addition to providing physical pleasure, eating and drinking bear
symbolic and aesthetic value in human experience, and they
continually inspire writers and artists. Carolyn Korsmeyer explains
how taste came to occupy so low a place in the hierarchy of senses
and why it is deserving of greater philosophical respect and
attention.
Korsmeyer begins with the Greek thinkers who classified taste as
an inferior, bodily sense; she then traces the parallels between
notions of aesthetic and gustatory taste that were explored in the
formation of modern aesthetic theories. She presents scientific
views of how taste actually works and identifies multiple
components of taste experiences. Turning to taste's objects -- food
and drink -- she looks at the different meanings they convey in art
and literature as well as in ordinary human life and proposes an
approach to the aesthetic value of taste that recognizes the
representational and expressive roles of food. Korsmeyer's
consideration of art encompasses works that employ food in contexts
sacred and profane, that seek to whet the appetite and to keep it
at bay; her selection of literary vignettes ranges from narratives
of macabre devouring to stories of communities forged by shared
eating.
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