The flavours of literature or: how gastronomy supports itself on ways of saying

Abstract

Based on the relation between the concepts of savoir and saveur (savoir [to know] and saveur [savor, flavor] have the same root in Latin), addressed since the already classic The Pleasure of the Text, by Roland Barthes, this work comprises two reflexive movements: the first is about the way Lite­rature, and specially Portuguese Literature, represents Gastronomy, con­cerning authors such as Camilo Castelo Branco, Eça de Queirós, Vitorino Nemésio, José Saramago, and António Lobo Antunes; in the second, what is emphasized is the way how Gastronomy uses the word to make itself ex­plicit in terms that imply a knowledge that appeals to the “literariness”, i.e., to the insistence on the literary “flavor/ saveur”.