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Food, Narrative, and Fantasy in David Leavitt’s 'The Body of Jonah Boyd'
Fusco, Serena
2015
Abstract
The aim of this essay is to analyze food as a system of signs, narrative fantasy, and metanarrative elements in the novel The Body of Jonah Boyd (2004) by David Leavitt. In the first part, I illustrate some implications of, and strategies for reading food practices as systems of signs and/or cultural narratives; then I move on to argue that this signification can be related to an idea of fantasy as the imaginary relation between individual subjects and a given form of reality. In the second part, I use the relationship between food, signification, and fantasy as a critical tool for reading Leavitt’s novel, one that features food and its rituals as a code through which fantasies and fictions shape reality—taking, in turn, the form of (meta)literary, combinative clues to be deciphered.
Publisher
EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste
Source
Serena Fusco "Food, Narrative, and Fantasy in David Leavitt’s 'The Body of Jonah Boyd'" in: Leonardo Buonomo and Elisabetta Vezzosi (edited by) "Discourses of Emancipation and the Boundaries of Freedom. Selected Papers from the 22nd AISNA Biennial International Conference", EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste, 2015, pp.273-281
Languages
en
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