Amazon cover image
Image from Amazon.com

Holy feast and holy fast : the religious significance of food to medieval women / Caroline Walker Bynum.

By: Material type: TextTextSeries: New historicismPublication details: Berkeley : University of California Press, c1987.Description: xvi, 444 p., 30 p. of plates : ill. ; 24 cmISBN:
  • 0520063295 (pbk)
Subject(s):
Contents:
Religious women in the later Middle Ages. New opportunities ; Female spirituality : diversities and unity -- 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 -- 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 -- Food in the lives of women saints. The low countries ; France and Germany ; Italy -- Food in the writings of women mystics. Hadewijch and Beatrice of Nazareth ; Catherine of Siena and Catherine of Genoa -- Food as control of self. Was women's fasting anorexia nervosa? ; Food as control of body : the ascetic context and the question of dualism -- Food as control of circumstance. Food and family ; Food practices and religious roles ; Food practices as rejection of moderation -- The meaning of food : food as physicality. Food and flesh as pleasure and pain ; The late medieval concern with physicality -- Woman as body and as food. Woman as symbol of humanity ; Woman's body as food -- Women's symbols. The meaning of symbolic reversal ; Men's use of female symbols ; Women's symbols as continuity.
Holdings
Item type Current library Call number Copy number Status Date due Barcode
Books (30-Day Checkout) Books (30-Day Checkout) Nash Library General Stacks BR253.B96 1987 1 Available 33710000998877

Bibliography: p. 303-419.

Includes indexes.

Religious women in the later Middle Ages. New opportunities ; Female spirituality : diversities and unity -- 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 -- 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 -- Food in the lives of women saints. The low countries ; France and Germany ; Italy -- Food in the writings of women mystics. Hadewijch and Beatrice of Nazareth ; Catherine of Siena and Catherine of Genoa -- Food as control of self. Was women's fasting anorexia nervosa? ; Food as control of body : the ascetic context and the question of dualism -- Food as control of circumstance. Food and family ; Food practices and religious roles ; Food practices as rejection of moderation -- The meaning of food : food as physicality. Food and flesh as pleasure and pain ; The late medieval concern with physicality -- Woman as body and as food. Woman as symbol of humanity ; Woman's body as food -- Women's symbols. The meaning of symbolic reversal ; Men's use of female symbols ; Women's symbols as continuity.