Eating Cultures in Children’s Literature: National, International and Transnational Perspectives
Keywords:
Childrens literature, Eating cultureSynopsis
Eating Cultures in Children’s Literature – National, International and Transnational Perspectives investigates how the child is positioned as the consumer/eater of cultural food. It also highlights some ingredients that are to be found on more than one national menu, so to speak. We interrogate what it means to serve a “cultural meal” to a young person, identifying the discourses that are inscribed in the recipe. By analyzing authorial or translational choices, the different chapters explore the thematic and ideological roots of the stories that authors, illustrators and translators offer their young readers. The essays in this collection are organized around three themes in children’s cultural and literary texts about food and eating. In the first section, the political dimensions of food narratives are explored. Food’s power to define “us” versus “them” is key to understanding food narratives in their national and political contexts. The second part is dedicated to inter/national and transnational nightmares, specifically narratives addressing the supreme threat lurking in young people’s literature: being eaten. Finally, the collection features a section on food fantasies in young people’s narratives, and addresses the disconcerting capability of food to transform, translate, transcend and become abundantly surreal, without ever losing the power to marvel and satiate, even when it conveys complex concepts and ideas.
Enjoy!
Chapters
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Introduction
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The “Toad in the Hole”Food and Foodways in Sue Townsend’s “Adrian Mole” YA Saga
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From Sardines to Sponge CakeCulinary Nationalism and Cultural Heritage Preservation in Anna James’ Tilly and the Bookwanderers and Laura Walter’s Mistica Maëva e l’anello di Venezia
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Motherhood at Table in Post-War BritainThe Family Meal as a Cultural Ideal
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Voracious NonsenseThe Cannibalistic Pleasures and Gluttonous Delights of Edward Lear’s and Laura Richards’s Nonsense Poetry
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Children and Pigs, from the Victorian Age to the Twentieth Century
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Gargantuan Appetites
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Swallowed by not EatenImages of the Totemic Meal and Children’s Culture
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Gastronomical Nonsense in Lewis Carroll’s Alice Books
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What and How Will We Eat in Future?Food Culture, Food System, and Food Memory in Cli-fi Novels for Young Adults
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A Feminist Strike in the KitchenGender and Food in Adela Turin’s Storia di panini
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Humor, Hunger and HumanityFood and Eating in the Works of Astrid Lindgren
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Delights of Dinners, Pleasures of Picnics in the “Make-believe” Food Fantasies of the Edwardian Children’s Literature Translated into Polish
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AfterwordIn Search of a Theory: from Potter, B. to Beaker, T.
