Tasting French terroir
Subtitle: the history of an idea
By: Thomas Parker
Series: California studies in food and culture -- 54; California studies in food and culture -- 54.
Publisher: University of California Press
Published: 2015
Language: eng
Number of pages: 229
ISBN-13: 9780520277502; 9780520277519
Subjects: Terroir; History
Description: "This book explores the origins and significance of the French concept of terroir, demonstrating that the way the French eat their food and drink their wine today derives from a cultural mythology that evolved between the Renaissance and the Revolution. Through close readings and an examination of little-known texts from diverse disciplines, Thomas Parker traces terroir's evolution, providing a privileged insight into how gastronomic mores were linked to aesthetics in language, gardens, and painting and how the French used the power of place to define the natural world, explain comportment, and frame France as a nation"--Provided by publisher.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 187-215) and index.
Table of contents: title: Introduction : terroir and the culinary roots of French identity; title: Rabelais' table and the poets of the Pléiade : from culinary universalism to literary regionalism; title: The plantification of people; title: Courtside purity and the Académie française's attack on the earth; title: France's green evolution : from provincial fields to perfect gardens and terroir's expulsion from Versailles; title: Saint-Évremond and the invention of geographical connoisseurship; title: Terroir and nation building : the story of Boulainvilliers, du Bos, and the case of class; title: The normalization of terroir : Paris and the provinces; title: Conclusion : terroir and nation: from geographic identity to psychogeography.