Comparative Literature 4CW
Eat Your Heart Out: Eating and Loving from the Age of Enlightenment to the Twentieth Century
Course Description
From “cannibalism” and the bite of an eighteenth century vampire to basil and murder in the nineteenth century and love, sex, and hunger in the twentieth century, this course will explore the relationship—often fatal—between food and love, and food and sex; and the experience of hunger both as the physical unavailability of food, as well as the unfulfilled desire to love and be loved. As such, our readings will take into consideration the relationship between sex, food, and feasting, as well as the economic and socio-cultural circumstances that allow for the replacement of food with sex and/or love and vice versa. Each text has been carefully selected from varied historical and cultural areas throughout the world for the ways in which it might help students enter into a rich and meaningful discussion on the topic of the course theme. Throughout the course, we will be challenged to link concepts such as “desire” and cannibalism with dwindling economic conditions, and “hunger” with exile and sexual repression and/or deprivation, ultimately allowing us to expand on and question our understanding of food as sustenance and love as food’s only source.
Required Texts
Selected poetry from Heinrich August Ossenfelder and John Keats, (will be available on PDF)
Jonathan Swift. A Modest Proposal and Other Satirical Works (Dover Thrift 1996)
Laura Esquivel. Like Water for Chocolate (Doubleday 1992)
Zoe Valdés. Yocandra in the Paradise of Nada: A Novel of Cuba (available as reader)
Required Films
*depending on availability, the film will be on reserve at YRL.
Alfonso Arau’s Like Water for Chocolate (1992)
Recommended Viewing
Mira Nair’s Monsoon Wedding (2001)
Ang Lee’s Eat, Drink, Man, Woman (1994)
