Abstract
The food history of the late British empire is an extended rehearsal for our own global food regime, and this paper positions modernist literature of the early twentieth century as a rich cultural archive to be mined for our own application. I argue that the industrialization of Britain’s food system made the natural world “modernist,” a term I use as literary scholars understand it—stylistically: disorienting, unfamiliar, and artificial; but also exhilarating, prone to excess, and above all, new. Intensive farming methods like monocultures introduced a logic of surplus into rural landscapes, exploding the constraints of climate, season, and cycle, and transforming the natural world into a terrain of the imagination. In turn, writers of the era searched for new forms to tell stories about the changing environments around them. Examples from Thomas Hardy, E.M. Forster, and Virginia Woolf reveal the presence of food politics at the heart of many artistic innovations. I discuss how genres like the pastoral failed, refrigeration imploded linear chronology, and food rationing challenged narrative voice and authority. In light of climate change, nutritional dearth, and other persistent problems, modernist texts bring to life a similar era of emergency and anxiety. Not only do they historicize contemporary crises, they provide sites of advocacy, progressive attitudes, and guides for fair use. Studying literature summons the past as a way, to use a modernist term, of “defamiliarizing” the present so that habits of perception can be challenged, refined, and renewed.
Presenters
Jessica MartellAssistant Professor, Interdisciplinary Studies, Appalachian State University, North Carolina, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Food Politics, Industrial Food, Literature, Modernism, Arts, Humanities, Britain
