The Commentary to Dostoyevsky's "Gastronomical Language" as a Necessary Instrument of Slow Reading

Abstract

The problems of food history and national culinary traditions as the reflection of the most important cults and rituals in people’s life have recently become the object of many researchers’ intense interest. Food as a cultural product has always been an important character in fiction shaping a “gastronomical language” that is unique for each author. In the base of its imaginative potential we can find a human capability to transform words into visual images. This particular method of information transfer (by means of emotional images) is one of the personal features of F.M. Dostoyevsky’s works. In the field of food realiae tea holds a prominent place. Any references to it in fiction are always focused on the process of consuming, because tea existed as a ritual and kept its main traditions in almost every national culture. In this article I have attempted for the first time to systematize the specifics of tea drinking in F.M. Dostoyevsky’s works.

Keywords

• foodstudies
• tea party (drinking) in the works of f.m. dostoyevsky