Culinary motifs in the contemporary literature italian journeys

Giulia Kamińska Di Giannantonio in paper entitled Culinary motifs in the contemporary literature italian journeys proposes an analysis of descriptions of food, its preparation and eating, appearing in literature, especially in travelogues, reportages or personal documents. The author will analyse texts regarding Italy and Italian journeys written by Tessa Capponi-Borawska, Zbigniew Herbert, Jarosław Mikołajewski, Marek Zagańczyk and Dariusz Czaja. The purpose of this Chapter is to search the descriptions of examples of Italian cuisine in mentioned authors, and, next, to look and examine the narrative strategies therein. Describing and characterizing banqueting or feasting and eating meals and also introducing recipes of local dishes or foreign names of meals in the text is a very important element of contemporary travels’ reports. Its purpose is to bring closer the experience of journey to the reader and to create more attractive and more credible narration. As will be shown in this chapter, in Polish contemporary literature about Italy the culinary topic is being used in differents ways and with differents aims. Tessa Capponi-Borawska in Dziennik toskański (2004) focuses all the narration on the motive of italian cuisine. Jarosław Mikołajewski in his Terremoto (2017), a work of a syncretic genre, uses the culinary motifes to intensify the expression of his narration. Some authors, like Dariusz Czaja in Gdzieś dalej, gdzie indziej (2010), chose only one component of local gastronomy to describe, namely wine, to the exclusion of any other food types. Finally, some writers renounce absolutly mentioning food in their books in favour of the more sophisticated themes like literature, story or art (this strategy is typical for all italian books of Marek Zagańczyk)