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Fat Bodies in Early Modern Europe

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art history
artistic
body studies
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Category=NHD
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cultural history
Early Modern Culture
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European history
Fatness
medical
social constructs
The Body

Product details

  • ISBN 9781032771663
  • Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
  • Publication Date: 06 Apr 2026
  • Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd
  • Publication City/Country: GB
  • Product Form: Hardback
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Description
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.
About

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.