Umfang:
1 online resource (496 pages)
Ausgabe:
1st ed.
ISBN:
9780520908789
Serie:
The New Historicism: Studies in Cultural Poetics Ser v.1
Inhalt:
In the period between 1200 and 1500 in western Europe, a number of religious women gained widespread veneration and even canonization as saints for their extraordinary devotion to the Christian eucharist, supernatural multiplications of food and drink, and miracles of bodily manipulation, including stigmata and inedia (living without eating). The occurrence of such phenomena sheds much light on the nature of medieval society and medieval religion. It also forms a chapter in the history of women. Previous scholars have occasionally noted the various phenomena in isolation from each other and have sometimes applied modern medical or psychological theories to them. Using materials based on saints' lives and the religious and mystical writings of medieval women and men, Caroline Walker Bynum uncovers the pattern lying behind these aspects of women's religiosity and behind the fascination men and women felt for such miracles and devotional practices. She argues that food lies at the heart of much of women's piety. Women renounced ordinary food through fasting in order to prepare for receiving extraordinary food in the eucharist. They also offered themselves as food in miracles of feeding and bodily manipulation. Providing both functionalist and phenomenological explanations, Bynum explores the ways in which food practices enabled women to exert control within the family and to define their religious vocations. She also describes what women meant by seeing their own bodies and God's body as food and what men meant when they too associated women with food and flesh. The author's interpretation of women's piety offers a new view of the nature of medieval asceticism and, drawing upon both anthropology and feminist theory, she illuminates the distinctive features of women's use of symbols. Rejecting presentist interpretations of women as exploited or
Inhalt:
Cover -- CONTENTS -- LIST OF PLATES -- PREFACE -- INTRODUCTION -- Part I: The Background -- 1 RELIGIOUS WOMEN IN THE LATER MIDDLE AGES -- New Opportunities -- Female Spirituality: Diversities and Unity -- 2 FAST AND FEAST: THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND -- Fasting in Antiquity and the High Middle Ages -- A Medieval Change: From Bread of Heaven to the Body Broken -- Part II: The Evidence -- 3 FOOD AS A FEMALE CONCERN: THE COMPLEXITY OF THE EVIDENCE -- Quantitative and Fragmentary Evidence for Women's Concern with Food -- Men's Lives and Writings: A Comparison -- 4 FOOD IN THE LIVES OF WOMEN SAINTS -- The Low Countries -- France and Germany -- Italy -- 5 FOOD IN THE WRITINGS OF WOMEN MYSTICS -- Hadewijch and Beatrice of Nazareth -- Catherine of Siena and Catherine of Genoa -- Part III: The Explanation -- 6 FOOD AS CONTROL OF SELF -- Was Women's Fasting Anorexia Nervosa? -- Food as Control of Body: The Ascetic Context and the Question of Dualism -- 7 FOOD AS CONTROL OF CIRCUMSTANCE -- Food and Family -- Food Practices and Religious Roles -- Food Practices as Rejection of Moderation -- 8 THE MEANING OF FOOD: FOOD AS PHYSICALITY -- Food and Flesh as Pleasure and Pain -- The Late Medieval Concern with Physicality -- 9 WOMAN AS BODY AND AS FOOD -- Woman as Symbol of Humanity -- Woman's Body as Food -- 10 WOMEN'S SYMBOLS -- The Meaning of Symbolic Reversal -- Men's Use of Female Symbols -- Women's Symbols as Continuity -- Conclusion -- EPILOGUE -- LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS -- NOTES -- GENERAL INDEX -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- Y -- INDEX OF SECONDARY AUTHORS -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- Z.
Anmerkung:
Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources
Weitere Ausg.:
ISBN 9780520063297
Weitere Ausg.:
Erscheint auch als Druck-Ausgabe ISBN 9780520063297
Weitere Ausg.:
Print version Holy Feast and Holy Fast : The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women
Sprache:
Englisch
Schlagwort(e):
Electronic books
URL:
https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/kxp/detail.action?docID=223849
Mehr zum Autor:
Bynum, Caroline Walker 1941-
