"Eating the Enlightenment" offers a new perspective on the
history of food, looking at writings about cuisine, diet, and food
chemistry as a key to larger debates over the state of the nation
in Old Regime France. Embracing a wide range of authors and
scientific or medical practitioners--from physicians and poets to
philosophes and playwrights--E. C. Spary demonstrates how public
discussions of eating and drinking were used to articulate concerns
about the state of civilization versus that of nature, about the
effects of consumption upon the identities of individuals and
nations, and about the proper form and practice of scholarship. En
route, Spary devotes extensive attention to the manufacture, trade,
and eating of foods, focusing upon coffee and liqueurs in
particular, and also considers controversies over specific issues
such as the chemistry of digestion and the nature of alcohol.
Familiar figures such as Fontenelle, Diderot, and Rousseau appear
alongside little-known individuals from the margins of the world of
letters: the draughts-playing cafe owner Charles Manoury, the
"Turkish envoy" Soliman Aga, and the natural philosopher Jacques
Gautier d'Agoty. Equally entertaining and enlightening, "Eating the
Enlightenment "will be an original contribution to discussions of
the dissemination of knowledge and the nature of scientific
authority.
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