From Scholar to Dollar Food, Culture, and Society in England and France in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries

Date of Award

2007

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Social Sciences

First Advisor

Benes, Carrie

Keywords

Food, Social Class, Coffee, Resturants, Coffeehouses, Salons, France, England, 17th Century, Seventeenth Century, 18th Century, Eighteenth Century

Area of Concentration

Social Sciences

Abstract

This thesis explores the relationship between food and scholarship in commercial spaces from the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries. In England and France, middle-class scholars adopted the aristocratic values of novelty, conviviality, and delicacy, and adapted them to public spaces in the city. The people, their conversations, and their physical spaces illustrate the shift from aristocratic patronage to market culture. The seventeenth-century English coffeehouse, and the eighteenth-century French salon and restaurant, all fit this pattern to differing degrees. While exhibiting the above pattern, the eighteenth-century French restaurant transformed food-enabled scholarship into food scholarship. Though the importance of food scholarship has become marginalized in modern society, in the eighteenth century, people could actually be defined by what they ate.

Rights

This bibliographic record is available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication. The New College of Florida, as creator of this bibliographic record, has waived all rights to it worldwide under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights, to the extent allowed by law.

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