Jean-Claude Bonnet
Writing the preface to the complete text of Grimod de la Reynière's Almanach des Gourmand is a task in itself, as anyone who ventures to do so has the daunting task of introducing more than a thousand pages of gastronomic scholarship, eight years of a seminal text without which the gastronomic vocabulary so characteristic of French cuisine would undoubtedly not exist. Add to this a work as extensive as it is profound, tackling the subject of food with all the flavor of the pen, in La Gourmandise et la faim, and one can only wait impatiently to discover the little-known links that Jean-Claude Bonnet will reveal between these two literary émigrés, Grimod de la Reynière and Brillat-Savarin.
Bio
Jean-Claude Bonnet, emeritus research director at the CNRS, has published numerous works on the 18th century and the Revolution. His book Naissance du Panthéon earned him the Chateaubriand Grand Prize for History in 1998. He was the driving force behind the first complete reissue of the main works of Louis-Sébastien Mercier, and has also contributed to 20th-century literature and cinema (notably in the journal Critique). His book La Gourmandise et la Faim (2015) is the culmination of research that began with his first article, “Le Système de la cuisine et du repas chez Rousseau” (The System of Cooking and Eating in Rousseau) " (Poétique, no. 22, 1975). He has published most of Grimod de la Reynière's writings (L'Almanach des Gourmands and the Manuel des Amphitryons) with MENUFRETIN, as well as Grimod de la Reynière et son groupe by Gustave Desnoiresterres. His book Les Connivences secrètes. Diderot, Mercier, Chateaubriand (2020) won the Grand Prix de l'Essai de l'Académie Française in 2021. His latest work was published in 2023 in Gallimard's “Beaux livres” series under the title Jeanne par Jeanne Moreau. Texts selected and presented by Jean-Claude Bonnet.