Search results for "cannoli"
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How Sicily Made its Sweet Symbols: Glocal Identity and Food
2020
The concept of symbol has always been very controversial for the science that studies the processes of signification, at the same time too rich in determinations by the common sense and too inconsistent from a formal point of view. A gastronomic example may be that of pizza and pasta that, at a certain moment, acquired the role of symbols of Italian gastronomy to the point of being perceived as fetishes of taste (which is both gastronomic thought and aesthetic sensibility) of this country. Everybody forgot not only how recent was their invention but also that they were just two of the several possible elements of an enormously more complex system.
How Sicily Made Its Sweet Symbols: Glocal Identity and Food
2021
Food is an effective symbol capable of strongly evoking a cultural identity. In the case of Sicily, this role is mainly played by pastry, and in particular by two sweets: cannolo (the singular of cannoli) and cassata. But how does it happen that just these two preparations, rather than others, take on this value? What are their meanings and what determines them? Are cannolo and cassata the expression of a remote and spontaneous tradition as we generally like to believe? Semiotic analysis not only leads us to understand the complexity of these two pieces of a gastronomy, but also to reflect on the whole notion of symbol, rethinking its limits and possibilities.