Italy’s Culture Code (Gastronomy Through the Eyes of the Other)

Abstract

Language is a kind of cultural unconscious, often hidden from our own understanding, and nevertheless manifested in everyday actions and rituals. This paper attempts to trace the appearance of certain symbols characterizing the territory of the Apennine Peninsula. There emerges a way of reading the cultural text of a nation by the Other, inextricably linked with the influence of visual arts and the subjective experience of travelers on it. Long–term attitudes that have developed in the speculation of foreign cultures as a result of interactions with Italian reality are cultural codes understood as keys capable of deciphering the nation’s unique features. Given the peculiarities of the socio-cultural context in which we are immersed, the consideration of the enogastronomic culture of Italy in the optics of the Other determines the central theme of the present paper.