Member Profile
Name:
Lindsay Middleton
Institution:
University of Glasgow/University of Aberdeen
Academic status:
Student
Main discipline:
Literary Studies
Additional disciplines:
History
Other societies:
RSVP
Research interests:
My ongoing PhD dissertation, titled 'The Technical Recipe: A Formal Analysis of Nineteenth-Century Food Writing,' investigates culinary recipes as a literary and technological form throughout the nineteenth century. I look to demonstrate that, like the poem or novel, the culinary recipe is a literary technology which has both practical purposes and aesthetic qualities. By combining a formal, literary reading of recipes derived from Caroline Levine’s ‘Strategic Formalism,’ with a historical, quantitative overview of the patterns traceable through recipes in the nineteenth-century, I argue for their re-definition as a valuable cultural, literary and historical form.
I am interested in the development of recipe writing practices, and how those reflect, mediate and disrupt social and cultural norms throughout the nineteenth century.
I am also interested in innovations in food technology in the nineteenth century, investigating these through the prevalence of technology in culinary recipes across different textual media, including cookbooks, manuscript recipe collections, newspapers and periodicals. This includes a study of the surprising uses of food technology, as I investigate the role of the technology’s user in adapting the meaning and purpose of technologies. Indeed, the consideration of users of technology extends to a study of the recipe reader as an agent who may adapt the text to suit their purposes. Taking the idea of tacit knowledge as an inroad into both of these relationships, I consider how recipes and food technologies are arguably similar forms in their potential for adaptation.
My consideration of nineteenth-century recipes extends to how the formal literary qualities of recipes can be seen to shape or reflect other literary forms from the period, such as poems or novels.
I am interested in the development of recipe writing practices, and how those reflect, mediate and disrupt social and cultural norms throughout the nineteenth century.
I am also interested in innovations in food technology in the nineteenth century, investigating these through the prevalence of technology in culinary recipes across different textual media, including cookbooks, manuscript recipe collections, newspapers and periodicals. This includes a study of the surprising uses of food technology, as I investigate the role of the technology’s user in adapting the meaning and purpose of technologies. Indeed, the consideration of users of technology extends to a study of the recipe reader as an agent who may adapt the text to suit their purposes. Taking the idea of tacit knowledge as an inroad into both of these relationships, I consider how recipes and food technologies are arguably similar forms in their potential for adaptation.
My consideration of nineteenth-century recipes extends to how the formal literary qualities of recipes can be seen to shape or reflect other literary forms from the period, such as poems or novels.