Portrait du Voyageur en mangeur sensible : nourriture et pratiques de consommation dans les parties allemande et suisse des Lettres d’un voyageur russe de Nikolaï Karamzine

Abstract

Portrait of the Traveler at the Dinner Table : Food in the German and Swiss Parts of Karamzin’s Letters of a Russian Traveler. As I have shown in a previous study, the French and british parts of Karamzin’s Letters of a Russian Traveler resort to the description of food primarily to depict national identities and to address political issues. the German and Swiss parts of the texts, which I explore in the present paper, mostly use it to characterize the new type of individual promoted by russian sentimentalism : the man of feeling. the study of the russian traveler’s food habits in Germany and Switzerland shows his endorsement of values such as moderation and cosmopolitism, as well as his taste for all things natural and his sense of sharing. It also reveals his sense of unobtrusive sophistication. these values are instrumental in defining the middle class russian nobility, whose distinctive values are popularized by Letters of a Russian Traveler.