Learning (to) taste: food,aesthetics, and education in early modern France

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the intersection between taste and education in the early modern period. The first part investigates the close connection between the sense of taste and the sin of gluttony, highlighting taste’s close association with food disorders in the late Middle Ages and early modernity. Silencing taste was by then a key aspect of the education of the body, which needed to be learned from the earliest age, at home as well as at school. The second part charts the rise of a moderate and honest gourmandise from the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries onward, accompanied by the invention of the polite bon goût and later the aesthetic taste of beauty, which contributed to a new social valorization of taste, while also complicating contemporary practices of learning (to) taste. Using a wide variety of early modern printed sources, including conduct books, religious and moral treatises, books of emblems, and treatises on the senses and on taste in particular, as well as aesthetic works, this paper sheds light on the multiple ways in which taste – of the body as much as of the mind – was used, learned, and displayed, hence revealing a transformation of the experience and understanding of taste throughout the early modern period, as well as its impact on educational practices.     

Discriminating taste: maintaining gendered social hierarchy in a cross-demographic fandom

To explore the role of hierarchical taste culture discourses in cross-gender media fandoms, this article considers “Bronies,” the adult, largely male fandom of girls’ animated series My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. This fandom’s presence has often been identified as a significant gender taste norm violation with positive feminist implications. The authors’ open-ended qualitative survey of 2915 Bronies reveals this fandom extensively uses discourses of “quality” and hierarchical value to legitimate their interest in the series, and that in articulating its value, the fan culture reinscribes taste and gender hierarchies. Our findings show that by deploying masculinized taste norms, Bronies maintain traditional taste hierarchies within their gender-atypical fandom and marginalize the very audience and viewing culture from which My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic originated. Rather than indicating an open-minded, stereotype-defying attitude toward girls’ media culture more broadly, fans often articulate the series’ value by denigrating other girls’ media texts. While unexpected fandoms may support cross-demographic viewing, we argue that these fandoms can nonetheless maintain gendered taste hierarchies that have marginalized women and are not as feminist as they appear at first glance.     

论杨万里的“诗味说”

＂诗味说＂是杨万里诗学思想的核心所在,其独特处在于：以＂味＂论诗歌群体风格特质——追求神似,＂舍形逐味＂;以＂味＂来规范传统诗教的怨刺内容——要求诗歌精光内敛。杨万里＂诗味说＂与＂晚唐异味＂密切相关,他服膺晚唐诗歌的工整,竭力标榜＂晚唐异味＂,是为其＂诗味说＂张本。     

《三国演义》《西游记》《水浒》中两类人物的双重审美标准

夯夫和美女是《三国演义》、《西游记》、《水浒》中两类人物,从外形到性格审美反差都很大,夯夫由丑渐美,美女由美渐丑。从文化中找寻其中的根由,并挖掘在名著中作家性别歧视的思维定势给作品带来的负面影响。     

News about Members

In this article a natural extension of the beta-binomial distribution is developed. Forced binary choice situations are modeled such that each individual has a probability p of knowing the correct answer. (This probability is distributed f(p) across the population.) Hence each individual will guess at the correct answer with probability 1 – p. The observable random variable R, the total number of correct answers (both by knowing and guessing) out of k trials has a rather complicated distribution. However, when f(p) is distributed beta with parameters m and n, the distribution P(r; k, m, n) can be expressed in terms of the well-known Gaussian hypergeometric function. This distribution has implications for true-false tests, taste tests, and virtually every other forced binary choice situation.     

论中国山水画生命艺术的诗禅情韵

中国山水画的最高境界就是空灵、静穆、飘逸之美,概因华夏山水画艺术的精神境界惟有凭借饱含情感并诉诸直觉体验的禅宗形象体系,才能暗示、象征、启迪、感化接受者,使之真切体悟到意境形象所涵盖的、尚无直接表现出的“心随物游”、“象外之象”、“味外之旨”、“言外之意”,从而诱导世人去寻觅那蕴含有生命终极关怀意义的审美价值和艺术自由解放的精神妙境。     

荧屏历史剧的存在形态及价值分野

正说型历史剧和戏说型历史剧是活跃在我国 荧屏上的两种基本历史剧类型，它们是两种不同的文化文本，在史学观、历史观和叙事规则 等方面都存在着迥异的价值分野。而“戏说剧”走红的原因，一是其契合了电视媒介大众文 化的特性，二是顺应了社会文化消费心理的兴起。就存在形态看，正说剧和戏说剧都面临着 模式的突破和品位的提升。