Mesa para dos. La Gastronomía en la Poesía y el Cine Españoles

This doctoral dissertation examines the alliances between Gastronomy, Film and Poetry in Peninsular Spanish Culture between 2000 and 2015. The thesis that I defend in this project argues that poetry and cinema employ the same tools in their display of culinary elements. These techniques are rooted in a concept promoted by the Catalonian chef Ferran Adrià: the “extrañamiento” that comes from a process of culinary deconstruction. Because of their need to enhance multiple meanings in a limited space, poets and filmmakers turn to “extrañamiento” as a means to capture the attention of the public who, unexpectedly, is able to shed a new and unprecedented light on the objects of the daily routine.In the first chapter I consider the dynamics of the table which, as stated by Massimo Montanari, could be considered a metaphor of life. Around the table, one can be defined as an individual and as part (or not) of a group, and eating is, therefore, a way to communicate and a means of communication. In the second chapter I discuss how the act of eating and the ingredients in the kitchen and on the table are considered symbolic elements that represent the meanings of time, desire, gluttony and excesses, death and memory. Finally, the third chapter is devoted to the supermarket and the interactions of poets and filmmakers with consumerism in the postmodern era. It serves to demonstrate why the model of non-place established by Marc Augé needs to redesign its limits in order to meet the aesthetic demands that artists of the new millennium are proposing. The labyrinth of the supermarket is not for them a place of transit or a neutral space, but the place where lyrically and cinematically the lines that separate life from death and loneliness from companion are defined. Through the analysis of proposals published in Spain between 2000 and 2015 I analyze in this dissertation the symbolic value of gastronomy in Contemporary Spanish Poetry and Film as a vehicle to represent the idiosyncrasies of this culture and the particularities of the individuals that comprise it