Abstract: This paper examines the literature of Upton Sinclair, famed American author of The Jungle, and how this 1906 novel led to the formation of Theodore Roosevelt's Food and Drug Administration. I am particularly interested in Sinclair's fascination with fasting fads, which reflect a larger Progressive-era preoccupation with physical fitness and the white male body. American literary naturalism, the late nineteenth and early twentieth-century movement to which Sinclair contributes, is a literature of and about human hunger. Many scholars have focused on The Jungle, a seminal book that revolutionized the food industry; however, little work has been done on the narratives about fasting and fitness that followed. My work therefore draws attention to a dietary discourse that reveals a great deal about early twentieth-century conceptions of masculinity, health, and the body. This paper is part of a larger effort to reconcile a counter-narrative of culturally disordered eating and self-restraint on the one hand with the ecological ethics so central to naturalism's politically radical sentiments on the other. Keywords: AGRICULTURE; FASTING; FITNESS; NATURALISM; VEGETARIANISM
...MoreSimilar Citations
Article
Rudy, Kathy;
(2012)
Locavores, Feminism, and the Question of Meat
(/isis/citation/CBB001202115/)
Article
Morton, Timothy;
(1998)
The Pulses of the Body: Romantic Vegetarianism and Its Contexts
(/isis/citation/CBB000952598/)
Thesis
Ehrenberger, Kristen Ann;
(2014)
The Politics of the Table: Nutrition and the Telescopic Body in Saxon Germany, 1890--1935
(/isis/citation/CBB001567561/)
Book
Adrienne Rose Bitar;
(2018)
Diet and the Disease of Civilization
(/isis/citation/CBB944318327/)
Book
Wallach, Jennifer Jensen;
(2013)
How America Eats: A Social History of U.S. Food and Culture
(/isis/citation/CBB001202133/)
Book
Roy, Parama;
(2010)
Alimentary Tracts: Appetites, Aversions, and the Postcolonial
(/isis/citation/CBB001201388/)
Book
Lisa Haushofer;
(2022)
Wonder Foods: The Science and Commerce of Nutrition
(/isis/citation/CBB755765560/)
Chapter
Gilman, Sander L.;
(2013)
Epidemics of Famine and Obesity: China as the Modern World
(/isis/citation/CBB001214660/)
Book
Deborah Blum;
(2018)
The Poison Squad: One Chemist's Single-Minded Crusade for Food Safety at the Turn of the Twentieth Century
(/isis/citation/CBB659205600/)
Book
Veit, Helen Zoe;
(2013)
Modern Food, Moral Food: Self-Control, Science, and the Rise of Modern American Eating in the Early Twentieth Century
(/isis/citation/CBB001201323/)
Chapter
Thoms, Ulrike;
(2014)
The Introduction of Frozen Foods in West Germany and Its Integration into the Daily Diet
(/isis/citation/CBB001500413/)
Thesis
Frohlich, Xaq Zachary;
(2011)
Accounting for Taste: Regulating Food Labeling in the “Affluent Society,” 1945--1995
(/isis/citation/CBB001567293/)
Article
Tello, Enric;
Garrabou, Ramon;
Cussó, Xavier;
Olarieta, José Ramón;
Galán, Elena;
(2012)
Fertilizing Methods and Nutrient Balance at the End of Traditional Organic Agriculture in the Mediterranean Bioregion: Catalonia (Spain) in the 1860s
(/isis/citation/CBB001320673/)
Article
Almeida, Maria Antónia Pires de;
(2013)
Epidemics in the News: Health and Hygiene in the Press in Periods of Crisis
(/isis/citation/CBB001320417/)
Book
Zweiniger-Bargielowska, Ina;
(2010)
Managing the Body: Beauty, Health, and Fitness in Britain, 1880--1939
(/isis/citation/CBB001550393/)
Article
Rüdiger Graf;
(2020)
Truth in the Jungle of Literature, Science, and Politics: Upton Sinclair's The Jungle and Food Control Reforms during the Progressive Era
(/isis/citation/CBB563474141/)
Article
Bigalke, Bernadett;
(2012)
Gesundheit und Heil: Eine Ideengeschichtliche Spurensuche zur Einordnung der Mazdaznan-Bewegung in Ihren Entstehungskontext
(/isis/citation/CBB001420248/)
Book
Marland, Hilary;
(2013)
Health and Girlhood in Britain, 1874--1920
(/isis/citation/CBB001422200/)
Thesis
Hughes, Ellen Roney;
(2001)
Machines for Better Bodies: A Cultural History of Exercise Machines in America, 1830--1950
(/isis/citation/CBB001562274/)
Article
Jauho, Mikko;
Niva, Mari;
(2013)
Lay Understandings of Functional Foods as Hybrids of Food and Medicine
(/isis/citation/CBB001320900/)
Be the first to comment!