The Harlequin Eaters: From Food Scraps to Modernism in Nineteenth-Century France

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How representations of the preparation, sale, and consumption of leftovers in nineteenth-century urban France link socioeconomic and aesthetic history

The concept of the harlequin refers to the practice of reassembling dinner scraps cleared from the plates of the wealthy to sell, replated, to the poor in nineteenth-century Paris. In The Harlequin Eaters, Janet Beizer investigates how the alimentary harlequin evolved in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries from the earlier, similarly patchworked Commedia dellarte Harlequin character and can be used to rethink the entangled place of class, race, and food in the longer history of modernism.

By superimposing figurations of the edible harlequin taken from a broad array of popular and canonical novels, newspaper articles, postcard photographs, and lithographs, Beizer shows that what is at stake in nineteenth-century discourses surrounding this mixed meal are representations not only of food but also of the marginalized peoplethe harlequin eaterswho consume it at this time when a global society is emerging. She reveals the imbrication of kitchen narratives and intellectualaesthetic practices of thought and art, presenting a way to integrate socioeconomic history with the history of literature and the visual arts. The Harlequin Eaters also offers fascinating background to todays problems of food inequity as it unpacks stories of the for-profit recycling of excess food across class and race divisions.

Reviews

"In Janet Beizers skillful hands,a curious nineteenth-century practice reveals fascinating networks of class, culture, and race in urban Paris and colonial France, leading readers to the modern roots of enduring differences in approaches to food scarcity, art, and more. Filled with archival discoveries and surprising forays into unexpected topics from clothing and color theory to Commedia dellArte and cannibalism, this masterfully written book is an absolute delight."Andrea Goulet, University of Pennsylvania, author of Legacies of the Rue Morgue: Science, Space, and Crime Fiction in France

"A fascinating glimpse into the hidden world of harlequins. In prose as lovingly constructed as the leftover meals themselves, Janet Beizer weaves a complex tale of aspiration, degradation, and transformation that conveys a message as urgent today as it has ever been: when it comes to questions of value, identity, and status, we really are what we eat."Carolyn Steel, author of Hungry City: How Food Shapes Our Lives and Sitopia: How Food Can Save the World

"Scrutinizing diverse literary and iconographic evidence, Janet Beizer ponders the unfortunates relegated to eating others' leftovers. Meticulously researched, theoretically sophisticated, persuasively argued, and engagingly written, The Harlequin Eaters broadens the bounds of contemporary literary, visual, and food studies. This is humanistic inquiry at its best, rigorous yet supple, bridging the alimentary and aesthetic, to probe these fascinating vestiges of our kaleidoscopic past."Michael Garval, North Carolina State University

Author Bio

Janet Beizer is C. Douglas Dillon Professor of the Civilization of France at Harvard University. She is author of Thinking through the Mothers: Reimagining Womens Biographies; Ventriloquized Bodies: Narratives of Hysteria in Nineteenth-Century France; and Family Plots: Balzacs Narrative Generations.