Zum Hauptinhalt springen
Nicht aus der Schweiz? Besuchen Sie lehmanns.de
Fat Bodies in Early Modern Europe -

Fat Bodies in Early Modern Europe

Buch | Hardcover
248 Seiten
2026
Routledge (Verlag)
9781032771663 (ISBN)
CHF 249,95 inkl. MwSt
  • Noch nicht erschienen (ca. April 2026)
  • Versandkostenfrei
  • Auch auf Rechnung
  • Artikel merken
This book is the first to examine understandings and experiences of fatness in early modern Europe (c. 1450-1700), uncovering attitudes towards fat bodies across England, France, Germany, Italy and Spain through interdisciplinary analysis. This book is written for students and scholars of the early modern period.
Discussions of fat, and its relationship to both health and beauty, are ever-present in the modern age, yet how did people in the early modern period understand and experience fatness? This interdisciplinary cultural history--edited by an art historian, a historian, and a specialist in literary studies--explores early modern conceptions of fatness as both an aesthetic judgement and social experience. The book explores the topic of fat through a broad spectrum of thematical and geographical perspectives, examining medical texts and health regimens concerning corpulence, competitions in weight-gaining among German women in childbed, as well as the contemporary connection between fatness and sexuality. It considers the multivalent imagery of the classical God Silenus’s body, the praise of fat women in Italian anti-humanist satire, and the view of the fat body as a threat to the authority of Spanish administrative officials. Finally, it explores the meaning of fattening animals in the context of early modern anxiety about the human/animal divide. In approaching fatness from such varied angles, this book goes beyond teleological narratives and dichotomic arguments to explore the complexity and ambiguity with which fat bodies were perceived and constructed in early modern Europe.

Jill Burke is a historian of the body and its visual representation at the Edinburgh College of Art Holly Fletcher is a cultural historian of the early modern period with a particular interest in the history of the body and its interactions with the material world. She is a Research Associate at the University of Manchester Christine Ott studied French, Italian and German Studies at the Universities of Eichstätt and St.-Étienne. She obtained her PhD in 2002 with a dissertation in Italian Literature on Reflections on language in the poetry of Eugenio Montale. She has been Research Fellow at the universities of Eichstätt, Heidelberg and Marburg and is Professor for Italian and French Literature at the Goethe-Universität in Frankfurt since 2011. Her main research areas are poetry (20th century and early modern), the relationship between literature and art, and Food/Corporeality Studies.

Introduction: Fat Bodies in Early Modern Europe Part I: Fatness, Health and Community 1. ‘No Age Did Ever Afford More Instances of Corpulency’: Obesity as a Collective Condition and the Early Modern Medicalization of Girth 2. Fatness and Fertility: Childbearing and the Size of Women’s Bodies in Early Modern Germany Part II: Cultural Hierarchies 3. The Fat Female Body in Angelo Beolco’s Anti-Classicist Literary Portraits 4. Silenus, as a Vase: The Fat Man’s Body at the School of Fontainebleau (c.1530-c.1570) 5. Laughter, Guilt, Anxiety: Dealing with Fat Animals in Early Modern Europe Part III: Shifting Meanings 6. Heavy Debates: Weighing Fatness in a Spanish Renaissance Dialogue 7. How to Fragment a Perfect Microcosm: The Sphere as the Shape of Fat Bodies in Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors and Cyrano’s ‘Contre un gros homme’ 8. Robust Hero/Fat Fool: Early Modern Fat Stereotypes in the Portrait of Alessandro dal Borro

Erscheint lt. Verlag 6.4.2026
Reihe/Serie Studies for the International Society for Cultural History
Zusatzinfo 10 Halftones, black and white; 10 Illustrations, black and white
Verlagsort London
Sprache englisch
Maße 156 x 234 mm
Themenwelt Geschichte Allgemeine Geschichte Neuzeit (bis 1918)
Geisteswissenschaften Geschichte Regional- / Ländergeschichte
Geschichte Teilgebiete der Geschichte Kulturgeschichte
ISBN-13 9781032771663 / 9781032771663
Zustand Neuware
Informationen gemäß Produktsicherheitsverordnung (GPSR)
Haben Sie eine Frage zum Produkt?
Mehr entdecken
aus dem Bereich
der Bauernkrieg 1525

von Lyndal Roper

Buch | Hardcover (2024)
S. Fischer (Verlag)
CHF 49,95
Geschichte einer wilden Handlung

von Gerd Schwerhoff

Buch | Hardcover (2024)
C.H.Beck (Verlag)
CHF 47,60
Bismarcks erster Krieg

von Klaus-Jürgen Bremm

Buch | Hardcover (2025)
Klett-Cotta (Verlag)
CHF 34,95