"El guaro es un alimento...": Revisiting Texts from Nationalist Polemic in Literature

Abstract

Every literary text is tributary of something broader: culture. This justifies the approach of literary representations of food, since according to D. Bunn, from a sociological perspective, the intake of food (liquid or solid) doesn’t respond exclusively to a vital necessity but also implies a number of sociocultural aspects that can be identified in literary texts. Furthermore, following the approach of M. Calvillo Jurado, the incorporation of food in literary discourse also accounts for the conformation of character-types. In this sense, the following text analyzes how the storytelling of Ricardo Fernández Guardia, which corresponds to nationalist polemic in literature, represents the association between the consumption of licor and the identity of the concho costarricense.