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Podcast: New Books in Food
Episode: Erin Alice Cowling, "Chocolate: How a New World Commodity Conquered Spanish Literature" (U Toronto Press, 2021)
Description: In terms of its popularity, as well as its production, chocolate was among the first foods to travel from the New World to Spain. Chocolate: How a New World Commodity Conquered Spanish Literature (U Toronto Press, 2021) considers chocolate as an object of collective memory used to bridge the transatlantic gap through Spanish literary works of the early modern period, tracing the mention of chocolate from indigenous legends and early chronicles of the conquistadors to the theatre and literature of Spain.The book considers a variety of perspectives and material cultures, such as the pre-Colombian conception of chocolate, the...