Saber y sabor. Escritura y comida : acerca de los paisajes alimentarios (foodscapes) ibéricos

It studies aspects of Iberian foodscapes from an ecocritical perspective. Food is one of the key and most evident components of our identity: who we are, where we live, where we come from. The food system is the repository of traditions and collective identity and an extraordinary vehicle for self-representation and cultural exchange. Umberto Eco used to say that when arriving in another country, before visiting museums or churches, it is important to wander around, observe the people, and then look for the local food: it is fundamental to understand the place and its unique way of thinking. In this book, based on a theoretical reflection on the key aspects of food studies, an exploration of key cases, representative of the Iberian identity, is proposed: the stories of exploration of proximity in a gastronomic key; the loss of colonies from gastronomic conflicts in Emilia Pardo Bazan; an inquiry into the fluid entity of the so-called paella in Manuel Vazquez Montalban; and a foray into several examples of gastronomic poetry, between food and affection, in poets such as Josep Carner, Pablo Neruda and Miguel Hernandez.