<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

The present article will explore the role that cookbooks had in eighteenth-century London, being extremely popular and highly pirated, probably the most successful women's printed genre of the eighteenth century. These cookery books represented a reliable source of information not only about social distinction and food practices, but also about urban development and marketability. This is not only an analysis of the literature and culture of food as printed in the eighteenth-century by well-known London publishing houses, but also an insight into the vast scope of city dwellers. I will look at how the rhetoric of food reveals the mentality, customs, and culinary developments of eighteenth-century urban practices, ranging from the private area of the home to the public space of the print market. The catalog of didactic language on how to pluck poultry, burn charcoal, or prepare dishes in a clean and hygienic environment expresses the richness of food-related terminology, as well as the diversity of epithets praising the quality of the book or indicating the expected market. The article argues that the terminology used in these cookbooks, the paratexts and the systematic structure of the recipes reflect a specific country/city divide, since they provided instruction on how to adapt rural recipes to an urban kitchen, acknowledged the social division between servant and mistress, and shaped a new consumer behaviour.
</abstract>

From Culinary Practice to Printed Text: The Eighteenth-Century Language of London Cookbooks

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Food practices (preparation and consumption) have long been viewed as mere domestic routines, and thus, often dismissed for being too “frivolous [a] realm” to receive the same scholarly attention as “great topics” such as “politics, economics, justice and power” (Shapiro 2). Emerging during the 1970s, food studies owe their theoretical model to research in fields of enquiry such as anthropology, sociology, structuralism, or women's studies, which have highlighted the aesthetic value of food and its transformative implications for the intermediation of social relations with others. Accordingly, food occasions various socio-cognitive activities that help an individual achieve a sense of attachment and belonging to a community.
Based on the premise that food is instrumental in social relations, as well as in expressing a wide range of values, experiences and emotions, the present analysis gives an insight into the epistemic potential of food to attribute new meanings to Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere memoir. Laura Shapiro's non-fictional account, <italic>What She Ate: Six Remarkable Women and the Food that Tells their Stories</italic><fn id="j_ewcp-2021-0002_fn_001" symbol="1">Laura Shapiro's <italic>What She Ate</italic> consists of the biographies of six notable female figures from different centuries and continents and highlights the importance of food in making them “recognizable” throughout history (7). Shapiro's collection of these women's personal stories and struggles gives insight into the more subtle meanings of food and its capacity to restore the balance of power between genders. In each story, food shapes the character's mind and body through evocations of endurance, resilience, internalized oppression, political statement or trendsetting dietary habits.</fn> serves as a useful starting point for the present reading of Wordsworth's <italic>Grasmere Journal</italic> as food narrative that has family relations, daily experiences and emotions constantly mediated through food.<fn id="j_ewcp-2021-0002_fn_002" symbol="2">In brief, <italic>The Journal</italic> represents an intimate record of Dorothy's life, household activities and personal observations of the (natural and social) world surrounding Dove Cottage, which she shared with her famous sibling, Romantic poet, William Wordsworth, between May 1800 and January 1803.</fn> In this sense, I propose a constructivist-relational approach to Dorothy's narrative as interconnected with food, with the primary aim to explore how her numerous food references in the <italic>Journal</italic> contribute to the construction of her personal narrative and identity. As posited here, <italic>The Grasmere Journal</italic> offers a glimpse of Dorothy and William Wordsworth's dietary, social and writing routines, but also projects an image of Dorothy in a position of power, a woman ahead of her time, with a progressive stance, which goes beyond the societal expectations with regard to women's domestic role during the Romantic period.
</abstract>

Dorothy Wordsworth's Food-Mediated “History of the Personal” in <italic>The Grasmere Journal</italic>

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This article analyzes the concept of food in Cormac McCarthy's dystopian, (post-)apocalyptic fiction, aiming to prove that in the American writer's universe the act of eating is deprived of its social and spiritual dimension, being restricted to its basic functionality similar to that of a meal-replacement product. The analysis draws a parallel between the concept of <italic>manna</italic> in the Exodus and the types of foodstuffs and their functionality in the novels <italic>Blood Meridian or the Evening Redness in the West</italic> and <italic>The Road</italic>, showing that food is one of the constituent ingredients of McCarthy's desert imaginary and is interpreted as a crucial weapon in the fight against death and dehumanization.
</abstract>

The Functionality of Food in Cormac McCarthy's Desert Imaginary, or Abundance and Scarcity in <italic>Blood Meridian or the Evening Redness in the West</italic> (1985) and <italic>The Road</italic> (2006)

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Apart from being a compelling discourse on immigrants, cultural clashes, the East-West conflict, arranged marriages, extramarital affairs and general existential anxiety, Monica Ali's novel <italic>Brick Lane</italic> is also a fascinating excursion into the sensual and meandering world of food and its emotional and cultural implications. Trapped in an arranged marriage devoid of the passion her woman's heart had hoped for, the protagonist Nazneen seeks a substitute type of sensuality first in food, and subsequently in her son Raqib and her lover Karim, all part of an intricate and complex process of cultural self-discovery and self-definition. The present essay focuses on how food plays a central role in Nazneen's life as a young immigrant in London, being her only remaining connection to her homeland and to herself. While constantly telling her hungry heart “do not beat with fear, do not beat with desire” (27), Nazneen eats herself up searching for personal agency and fulfillment in a life which offers her neither. Food appears within this complex equation as a balancing element, a safety net, and an escape mechanism, which allows the protagonist to sustain not only her physical body, but also her famished soul, and to (re)establish her thwarted connection to her national and cultural identity.
</abstract>

The Sensuality of Taste: Intercultural Dialogue and National Identity as Mediated by Food and Food Culture in Monica Ali's <italic>Brick Lane</italic>

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<italic>My Big Fat Greek Wedding</italic> (2002) captures the complex life of a Greek-American family and the struggles of the main protagonist, Toula Portokalos, to reconcile her own desires as a second-generation immigrant with those of her ethnic parents, especially in terms of gender roles and expectations. In the movie, Toula's journey towards self-discovery as a confident woman is peppered with food references, as food represents an essential “ingredient” that brings and holds the family together. Therefore, this essay sets out to examine how food practices and choices are both a reflection of ethnic identity and of conflicting generational beliefs about gender roles and expectations in the traditional family portrayed in <italic>My Big Fat Greek Wedding</italic>.
</abstract>

“Nice Greek Girls Are Supposed to Marry Greek Boys … and Feed Everyone”: Food, Gender, and Ethnicity in <italic>My Big Fat Greek Wedding</italic> (2002)

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The aim of this study is to describe the role of <italic>bentōs</italic> (Japanese lunch boxes) in contemporary Japanese society and its importance in different types of interpersonal relationships (the father-daughter relationship, friendship and love relationships). We will illustrate the value of this cultural element by analyzing the movie パパのお 弁当は世界一 <italic>Papa no Obentō wa Sekai Ichi</italic> 一 <italic>Dad's Lunch Box</italic> (2017) directed by Fukatsu Masakazu (who drew inspiration from a popular post on Tweeter in which a girl's high school graduation day is marked by the fact that she conveys her thanks to her father for having prepared her daily <italic>bentōs</italic> in the last three years (Shoji)), a movie that reflects various aspects of modern Japan: the changing roles of family members and the changing relationships between them. Moreover, we will focus on how <italic>bentō</italic> evolves into a means of communication in this movie, and how it contributes to reconfiguring the facets of Japanese masculinities in a society that is no more characterized by its traditional form. We will also depict the characteristics of <italic>bentōs</italic> and will take into consideration their historical background in order to situate them in the context of the evolution of food-preparing practices.
</abstract>

Cooking and Eating as Linguistic Experiences: Metamorphoses in the Japanese Familial Culinary Universe Reflected in the Movie パパのお弁当は世界 一 <italic>Papa no Obentō wa Sekai Ichi</italic> 一 <italic>Dad's Lunch Box</italic>

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Drawing upon Sara Ahmed's “cultural politics of emotion” and Claire Colebrook's conceptualization of “Cartesian affect,” this article puts forward the notion of affective refuge, a phenomenon which is investigated through an analysis of Samuel Beckett's <italic>Watt</italic>, <italic>Krapp's Last Tape</italic> and <italic>Ohio Impromptu</italic>. First, I highlight the opposing perspectives as well the potential common ground between Ahmed's and Claire Colebrook's theories in order to argue that the thought of affective refuge might actually be defined as the movement away from seeing affect as that which “make[s] us aware of [our] bodily dwelling” (Ahmed 26) and towards recognizing “the Cartesian moment of … never being proximate to one's own body,” as understood by Colebrook in her 2020 essay “Cartesian Affect” (442). I then go on to claim that, in <italic>Watt</italic>, affective refuge emerges as a reaction to fear, as the protagonist strives to process the surfaces of things and bodies around him via elaborate systems of perception, while in <italic>Krapp's Last Tape</italic> and <italic>Ohio Impromptu</italic>, the pain of remorse the characters experience regarding their own grieving practices comes to shatter the remainder of the affective refuge which had unfolded in their relationships to their departed loved ones.
</abstract>

Affective Refuge in the Work of Samuel Beckett

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The context of the communist regime in the late 1980s Romania was definitely a most peculiar one. During this period of time, translations from other languages were scarce and only the ones which were in accordance with the communist ideology were allowed. It was a time when people had neither many rights nor did they have many choices to make. In the latter part of the 1980s more and more foreign films were smuggled into the country and most of them were obviously American. Such films revealed a new and different world for those who watched them. Consequently, these films needed to be translated and the most well-known voice to have done it was Irina Margareta Nistor's. Her task was both interesting and demanding but also dangerous at the same time given the political context. This essay investigates the manner in which underground film “dubbing”<fn id="j_ewcp-2021-0008_fn_001" symbol="1">The translation technique used, in reality a combination between the techniques of voice-over and simultaneous interpretation, was mistakenly named ‘dubbing.’</fn> was done and describes the particularities of the clandestine film “dubbing” by discussing how it was performed and by analysing the translations qualitatively.
</abstract>

Underground Film Translations in 1980s Romania: A Gateway to Freedom

Hahner, Leslie A. <italic>To Become an American: Immigrants and Americanization Campaigns of the Early Twentieth Century</italic>. East Lansing, MI: Michigan State UP, 2017. Pp. 282. ISBN: 978-1611 862539.

Coghlan, Michelle J, ed. <italic>The Cambridge Companion to Literature and Food</italic>. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2020. Pp. 285. ISBN 978-1-108-44610-5 (paperback).

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Volume 23 (2023): Issue 2 (December 2023)

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Volume 20 (2020): Issue 1 (June 2020)

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East-West Cultural Passage

 Publishing House and Owner: Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu, Romania  East-West Cultural Passage appears biannually and publishes work by scholars interested in the cross-cultural dialogue in areas such as literature, history, film, popular culture, institutions, politics and related subjects. The journal is devoted to the study of cross-cultural understanding with a clear humanistic emphasis. Articles with an interdisciplinary character are particularly welcome. The journal also publishes notes and comments, review essays and book reviews.  The East-West Cultural Psassage Journal focuses on theoretical and empirical research in the humanities disciplines. The journal welcomes the submission of articles from the following fields:   Anthropology  Cultural studies  Education  Language  Linguistics  Literature  Novels and short stories  Poetry  Teaching   Archiving  Sciendo archives the contents of this journal in Portico - digital long-term preservation service of scholarly books, journals and collections.  Plagiarism Policy  The editorial board is participating in a growing community of Similarity Check System's users in order to ensure that the content published is original and trustworthy. Similarity Check is a medium that allows for comprehensive manuscripts screening, aimed to eliminate plagiarism and provide a high standard and quality peer-review process. 

East-West Cultural Passage

Volume 21 (2021): Issue 1 (June 2021)

From Culinary Practice to Printed Text: The Eighteenth-Century Language of London Cookbooks

Dorothy Wordsworth's Food-Mediated “History of the Personal” in The Grasmere Journal

The Functionality of Food in Cormac McCarthy's Desert Imaginary, or Abundance and Scarcity in Blood Meridian or the Evening Redness in the West (1985) and The Road (2006)

The Sensuality of Taste: Intercultural Dialogue and National Identity as Mediated by Food and Food Culture in Monica Ali's Brick Lane

“Nice Greek Girls Are Supposed to Marry Greek Boys … and Feed Everyone”: Food, Gender, and Ethnicity in My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002)

Cooking and Eating as Linguistic Experiences: Metamorphoses in the Japanese Familial Culinary Universe Reflected in the Movie パパのお弁当は世界一 Papa no Obentō wa Sekai Ichi 一 Dad's Lunch Box

Affective Refuge in the Work of Samuel Beckett

Underground Film Translations in 1980s Romania: A Gateway to Freedom

Hahner, Leslie A. To Become an American: Immigrants and Americanization Campaigns of the Early Twentieth Century. East Lansing, MI: Michigan State UP, 2017. Pp. 282. ISBN: 978-1611 862539.

Coghlan, Michelle J, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Literature and Food. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2020. Pp. 285. ISBN 978-1-108-44610-5 (paperback).

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