Cultural Intertexts

Cuprins

2025-05-06T14:20:46+03:00

Cuprins

Food Performativity and Transnational Identity in Selected Diasporic Women’s Writings

2025-05-09T08:40:38+03:00

Studying the intersection of food and identity is essential, especially when it interlaces with diasporic cultures. Through the process of immigration and acculturation, food acquires new shapes, meanings and accents, influencing, informing and even transforming our relationship with the world. Incorporating concepts from diasporic discourse such as culinary citizenship, third space and performativity, this paper demonstrates how the use of food narratives and practices in literary works plays a vital performative role in conveying the experiences of individuals living away from home, dealing with displacement and navigating their evolving transnational identities. Food is a cultural zone where different identity determinants intersect and engage in debate. This paper explores how some women writers from different diasporas use food for two primary functions: 1. to negotiate their female characters’ identity in displacement and produce the possibility of replacement, all while navigating the complexities of preserving or reconstructing their cultural identity; and more critically; 2. to enlighten their intended readers about the existing challenges, pains, prejudices and tensions in the assimilation process. In this context, food strategically performs as a discursive and multilayered agent, establishing
diversity awareness, challenging exclusionary attitudes and stimulating cross-cultural interactions. Food performativity is both constitutive and reflective of transnational identity construction across political borders—a point not to end here but to begin.

The Politics of Responsive Cookbooks: Counter Gastronomy Collectibles in Laura Esquivel’s Like Water for Chocolate

2025-05-09T08:41:17+03:00

This essay examines the politics of counter cookbooks whose role shifts from receptacles to
responses that mobilize revolutionary culinary spaces in the war narrative of Laura Esquivel’s
Like Water for Chocolate (1989). In particular, the essay redirects the main theories and
critiques that have been established and espoused in culinary studies. In this reading of Like
Water for Chocolate, a cross-cultural intervention in the existing scholarship on domestic
spatiality and female identity is addressed. Esquivel’s narrative features provisioning
collectibles that encode the mobility of the kitchen as a repository of women’s counter-discourses
that not only reverse but also chaotically recreate the structured conceptions in the master war
narratives. The kitchen in Esquivel’s narrative compiles cryptic scrapbooks of recipes whose
technologies of knowledge are either decoded or re-inscribed from one generation to another.
Arguably, women’s transgenerational gastronomic writings function as intersemiotic artefacts
that activate performative subject positions in gendered households and varied social contexts
that reflect the dominant power dynamics. So, Like Water for Chocolate decentralizes the
impact of external wars, as it curates recipes that are ekphrazeined and recreated in foodways
that empower individuals, galvanize new alliances, and decolonize female relations from the
national/international ideologies of warscapes, cultural signifiers, and collective memory. The
essay incorporates Homi Bhabha’s theory on the relation between the codification of history and
the art of collecting to examine the discursive relations between food and power. Ultimately,
this study revisits the complex dynamics of foodways as narrative functions, especially in
relation to social inequalities and justice as portrayed through literature and cultural narratives.

Feasts of Resistance:

2025-05-09T08:41:56+03:00

This paper explores the multifaceted representations of food as a symbolic medium in
constructing and negotiating female identities, tracing the lineage from mythological narratives
to postmodern feminist texts. By delving into the thematic intersections of food symbolism and
female agency within a broad spectrum of literature, the arts, and media, the study elucidates
how culinary motifs articulate power dynamics, social politics, and resistance movements. It
engages with Vandana Shiva’s critique of global food politics in Stolen Harvest: The
Hijacking of the Global Food Supply (2000), and Michaela DeSoucey’s analysis of culinary
resistance in Contested Tastes: Foie Gras and the Politics of Food (2016). Furthermore, it
highlights the contributions of Jessica B. Harris in High on the Hog: A Culinary Journey
from Africa to America (2011), illustrating the profound connection between gastronomy,
identity politics, and the feminist movement. Employing a multidisciplinary approach, the
research juxtaposes mythological depictions of women as nurturers and providers with
postmodern representations that challenge and subvert traditional roles through culinary
metaphors. It highlights the evolution of female identities from passive subjects of mythic lore
to active agents of feminist resistance, underscoring the transformative power of food imagery
in articulating and contesting gender norms. Furthermore, it examines how contemporary
feminist narratives harness the symbolism of food to critique societal structures, thereby
reinforcing the connection between gastronomy and the politics of identity. By analyzing the
contributions of scholars like Carole Counihan, and Penny Van Esterik in Food and Culture:
A Reader (2013) and the critical perspectives offered by Arlene Voski Avakian and Barbara
Haber in From Betty Crocker to Feminist Food Studies (2005), the article reveals the
nuanced ways food serves as a vehicle for exploring and asserting female identities across
temporal and cultural divides. It contributes to the broader discourse on gender, power, and
resistance by showcasing the enduring relevance of food symbolism in the ongoing struggle for
female autonomy and empowerment.

What is ‘Soup’?

2025-05-09T08:42:37+03:00

Food blogs are literary virtual forms and important ways in which migrants share recipes,
stories and ingredients. On blogs, some foods become emblematic of specific spaces linked to
concepts of identity, affordability and health. Using text, photos and videos, people express the
ways to make authentic dishes with novel ingredients. Over the past several years, food blogs
have become valuable means for Nigerian migrants to share recipes, highlighting ways to
substitute ingredients and still retaining the essential flavour and perceived nutritional content
of the dish. One such important staple dish for Nigerians is ‘soup’. By focusing on recipes for
‘soup’ we ask: what makes ‘soup’ such an important on Nigerian food blogs? Which soups are
most popular and what narratives do popular bloggers share about soups and their ingredients?
Using content and narrative analysis, we argue that soup recipes on blogs are part and parcel
of food literature that accompanies migration.

Exploring the Role of Food in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

2025-05-09T08:43:21+03:00

First published in 1961, Muriel Spark’s novel The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is one of the
most well-known works of 20th-century British literature, and the book’s portrayal of the
eponymous Edinburgh schoolmistress and her select clique of pupils during the turbulent 1930s
now forms part of contemporary popular culture. After presenting a quick panorama of the
author and the work, this article adopts a bipartite approach to describe the role of food at
different junctures in the narrative. Initially, it focuses on the types of foods presented and the
occasions where they are served (for example, as high teas), thereby seeking to outline whether
any wider literary symbolism can be detected. Subsequently, the article examines the unusual
role of food and foodstuffs in Miss Brodie’s romantic relationship with Mr Lowther, the school’s
music teacher, a liaison which is ostensibly centred around her focus on him consuming large
quantities of food in order to gain weight. These two sets of food-related observations are then
interpreted, analysed, and summarised before further suggestions for additional research on the
topic are outlined.

“I was hungered and ye gave me meat”: I n search of the Ultimate Eating Experience in Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Gourmet

2025-05-09T08:44:07+03:00

This article reads Ishiguro’s early screenplay The Gourmet (1986) as a work of comic Gothic,
blending archetypal Gothic elements (ghosts, cathedrals, crimes) and a dark, eerie, and
supernatural atmosphere with elements of comedy and satire. The main character’s quest for the
most unusual food on earth, or rather unearthly, serves as a mere pretext to depict a postThatcherite London, where homelessness and hunger were at every corner of the street. The
screenplay explores two types of hunger: the literal starvation of the poor who have nothing to
eat and depend on night shelters for survival, and the insatiable cravings of the rich, embodied
by the epicurean Manley, for whom nothing is good enough and who treads the earth far and
wide and depletes his great financial resources to satisfy his gastronomic desires. Manley finally
manages to reach his goal but is disappointed: the ghost he has eaten does not taste good and he
feels sick afterwards. In the end, the two worlds remain separate as they have always been: while
the ever-dissatisfied Manley is likely already plotting a new culinary adventure, the hungry
remain forgotten and ignored, the real flesh-and-blood ghosts of the story.

The Children in the Apple-Tree”:

2025-05-09T08:44:55+03:00

Since J. Alfred Prufrock asked the question “Do I dare to eat the peach?”, T.S. Eliot’s poems,
essays and plays have provided food for thought for generations over the past century. Literary
critics, historians and scholars of cultural modernity have occasionally noted the poet’s interest
in depicting and commenting on how modern individuals perceive sources of nourishment, their
transformative power and the consequences of their absence. This paper draws on previous
studies of his work to explore and highlight the representation of fruits, fruition and
fruitlessness in several of his poems. It also reconsiders earlier interpretations, shedding light
on missing aspects and bringing attention to new insights into poems from his earliest to his
last collections. The analysis employs several interpretive techniques, including symbolic
analysis to uncover how fruit imagery in Eliot’s work reflects themes of existential questioning,
spiritual emptiness and societal critique. It situates this symbolism within the broader
modernist exploration of alienation and renewal. Additionally, the study assesses Eliot’s literary
influences, such as European satire and French symbolism, and their impact on his thematic
concerns. An ecocritical perspective is also used to examine how Eliot’s portrayal of food and
nature engages with early 20th-century ecological and cultural issues, reconsidering
materialism and spirituality.

Pre-Raphaelite Food Politics or, Feasting on Desire:

2025-05-14T16:14:59+03:00

Renowned for his infamous painting Christ in the House of his Parents (1849-1850) or for The Tragic Story of Ophelia (1851-1852) which brought him domestic and international fame during his lifetime as a British painter, John Everett Millais (1829-1896) is known as one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (1848), a group of young and idealistic artists determined to instil vibrating energy and novelty into contemporary art which they considered to have been stifled by the prevailing conventions of the Royal Academy. Millais’s works display microscopic attention to pictorial realism and manifest an almost fetishistic attention to photographic detail; and yet, it is despite this covert technique (or maybe particularly due to it!) that Millais’ art manifests a certain politics springing from an exceptional daring in the way his paintings function as genuine social and cultural parables. Therein, the current paper looks into three of Millais’ paintings (namely, Bridesmaid (1851), Isabella (1868), and The Captive (1882)), as mirrors that reflect and challenge while obliquely commenting on and criticising Victorian social norms (particularly those related to gender, gender roles, binary oppositions and desire) through the depiction of food. Hence, the main focus of the paper is not merely uncovering Millais’ food aesthetics and the way he uses food as a subject of aesthetic interest but rather looking into Millais’ food politics (and poetics) and the way food becomes a vehicle for expressing deeper societal concerns, class distinctions, moral lessons, and cultural exchanges.

Famished Souls Struggling for Food in George Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London

2025-05-09T08:47:13+03:00

Bread and margarine with wine, or “tea-and-two-slices”, presents a choice that triggers vast
contemplations on poverty versus wealth and meaningful versus meaningless life. This paper
aims to highlight how George Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London tackles the
centrality of food and the people striving to obtain it. The purpose of this reading is to raise
contemporary readers’ awareness of the inequality between the effort to procure food and the
meagre outcomes, portrayed through a symphony of smells, a shocking juxtaposition of food
abundance and scarcity, and a conflict of states needing interpretation. Orwell sets the two
capitals in a mirroring progression where reflections magnify or diminish depending on people’s
involvement in solving the constant dilemma of survival. While Paris offers the poor a chance
to look for work, London reduces the struggle to mere begging for food, which is officially
banned. The layered perspective brings the reader to a stark realization: a heavenly meal in a
Parisian restaurant may have been prepared in “the hell of” a kitchen. In London, reality unfolds
on a horizontal plane, where charities providing food deprive the poor of the chance to work for
it. The contexts differ, but the props remain the same: filth, famine and an abundance of feelings.

Food, Texts and Types of Hunger in Jodi Picoult’s The Storyteller

2025-05-09T08:47:56+03:00

In the media, the theme of the Holocaust has always been most powerfully illustrated visually,
with images or videos depicting skeletal human beings on the verge of becoming twodimensional, almost transparent. In the remaining footage of WWII horrors, one can see that
those Jews who were kept in Nazi prisoner camps, and who were lucky enough not to be gassed
on arrival, still had to cope with the scarcity—or even total lack—of food, which would
eventually turn them into living skeletons. In literature, the theme of the Holocaust has been
approached differently, with writers constantly striving to find the best words and phrases to
appropriately describe the bodily sensations of those for whom food had almost become an
intangible item. This paper intends to show how Jodi Picoult’s novel The Storyteller (2013)
manages to make its readers mentally visualise the horrors of the Holocaust through the close
interconnectedness of (at least) two types of hunger: the physical hunger for food that might
enable prisoners to survive another day, and the hunger for texts and stories, which nourish the
mind and soul. The pursuit of justice, as well as the need for absolution from guilt, are other
types of hunger that this paper analyses, with a view towards a more applied approach within
the scope of the study

Savouring the Veiled Narratives of Banquet Menus

2025-05-09T08:48:40+03:00

The study explores the semiotic significance of late 19th to early 20th-century Romanian banquet
menus, transcending culinary functions to convey broader societal messages. By examining
thirty menus from Romania and Austro-Hungarian Romanian-speaking Transylvania,
predominantly sourced from newspapers, it reveals banquets as platforms for political and social
expression. Written in Romanian or French, these menus serve as conduits for political
opinions, declarations of friendship or enmity, and expressions of pride or despair. Intentionally
published in newspapers, they reflect a society valuing freedom of speech and exhibit a
discernible discursive character, treating food as intellectual nourishment. The coverage of
banquets in newspapers offers glimpses into contemporaneous events and personalities, serving
as historical documents shedding light on overlooked events and individuals. Through the
examination of these menus’ meanings, researchers gain insights into forgotten personalities
and societal dynamics, illustrating the enduring cultural significance of food beyond mere
sustenance.

The Flavour of Poor Things (2023)

2025-05-14T16:16:37+03:00

Poor Things has achieved remarkable success, surpassing $100 million globally and becoming Yorgos Lanthimos’s highest-grossing film. This accomplishment highlights the film’s broad appeal and its ability to engage audiences with its unique blend of dark comedy, magical realism, and rich thematic content. The present paper aims to analyse Poor Things (2023), adapted from Alasdair Gray’s 1992 novel and reinterpreting Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein for a modern audience. The film follows the journey of Bella Baxter, a resurrected woman navigating a surreal, gothic version of Victorian London, as she evolves and grapples with questions of
identity, morality, and empathy. This paper seeks to uncover a potentially overlooked thematic dimension in the film – its subtle engagement with veganism. By examining the narrative and thematic elements, the paper reveals how Poor Things subtly aligns with vegan principles, particularly in Bella’s growing empathy toward animals and her rejection of meat. While veganism is not explicitly emphasised, it emerges as a significant undercurrent, deepening the film’s exploration of ethics and the interconnectedness of all living beings. Through this lens, the paper positions Poor Things as a multifaceted cinematic work that not only reinterprets
classic literature but also engages with contemporary ethical issues, showcasing Lanthimos’s ability to provoke thoughtful reflection through cinema.

Activating Sensory Modalities: Translating (or not)

2025-05-09T08:50:08+03:00

The present paper illustrates and discusses decisions made by the translator when rendering the
texture and the taste of Bosnian-Herzegovinian traditional drinks into English, as described in
The Bosnian Cuisine (2016), which, apart from collected recipes, contains excerpts from
travelogues and literary works. In the paper, I refer to the adjective and the noun phrase
equivalence or the lack of equivalence thereof in the English language, whereas special attention
is given to using footnotes and brackets in translation, as well as to the negotiation process
between the translator and the proofreader whose L1 is English. Based on corpus analysis, it
can be concluded that the majority of decisions made regarding the nouns denoting traditional
dishes were made to preserve the original names and to resort to footnotes and/or bracketing in
order to render the reading experience and sensory modalities more accessible to readers, bearing
in mind that they may not have tasted or seen the drinks mentioned, but also taking into
consideration the wider socio-cultural context.

When “To Cook Dog” Becomes “Ragoût de Chien” – Reclaiming the Language of Recipes in the French

2025-05-09T08:50:53+03:00

The translation of cooking recipes is always a challenge irrespective of the source and target
language. However, this becomes even more challenging when the source text is set against the
backdrop of the Enlightenment, Versailles, and the French Revolution. Jonathan Grimwood’s
The Last Banquet proves to be an epic story of one man’s quest to know the world through its
many and marvelous flavors. So, although the source language is English, the setting is French
and since the book is replete with all sorts of sometimes mouthwatering, sometimes macabre
dishes (“Three Snake Bouillabaisse” or “Pickled Wolf’s Heart”), the French translator is faced
with the difficult challenge of French food that has to be translated from English. The present
article is, consequently, going to look into the translation of this book into French, and argue
that the French translator opted for a re-domestication or perhaps a reclaiming of food
terminology. The translator’s choice here is to reclaim the French food culture, obviously
“superior” to the Anglo-Saxon one, by enriching and re-appropriating the food-related language
of the English source text. To show that this is strictly the translator’s choice for French, the
corpus will extend to the Spanish translation of the novel, which turns out to be more loyal to
the source text.

"The Dinner Was as Well Dressed as Any I Ever Saw”:

2025-05-09T08:51:40+03:00

The present article investigates intertextuality in the retranslation of food-related culturespecific items employed in Jane Austen’s novel Pride and Prejudice. Such an investigation is
important because, as shown in the literature, Jane Austen mentions food stuffs and food-related
habits sparingly but meaningfully, in order to characterise her protagonists. The textual-based
analysis in the article is couched in Zhang & Ma’s (2018) framework on intertextuality in
retranslation and in Klaudy’s (2009) system of translational strategies. The investigation
conducted in this article disproves my initial prediction that the second translation, published
during communism, is the more influential target text, to the detriment of the first one,
published in 1943, and that the subsequent target texts are in a relation of filiation with the
second target text.