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Bestseller
BestsellerE-book
Author Bynum, Caroline Walker.

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

Publication Info. Berkeley : University of California Press, [1987]
©1987

Item Status

Description 1 online resource (xvi, 444 pages, 30 pages of plates).
data file
Series The new historicism : studies in cultural poetics
New historicism.
Bibliography Bibliography: pages 303-419.
Note Includes indexes.
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.
Summary 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 ha.
Local Note eBooks on EBSCOhost EBSCO eBook Subscription Academic Collection - North America
Language English.
Subject Food -- Religious aspects -- Christianity -- History of doctrines -- Middle Ages, 600-1500.
Women -- History -- Middle Ages, 500-1500.
Social history -- Medieval, 500-1500.
Food habits -- History -- To 1500.
Food habits.
History.
Chronological Term To 1500
Subject Social history -- Medieval.
Women -- Middle Ages.
Christianity.
RELIGION -- Christian Life -- Spiritual Growth.
RELIGION -- Christian Ministry -- Discipleship.
HISTORY -- Medieval.
Genre/Form History.
Subject Women.
Womyn.
Other Form: Print version: Holy feast and holy fast Berkeley : University of California Press, c1987. 0520057228 (alk. paper) (DLC) 85028896
ISBN 9780520908789 ebook
0520908783
0520057228 alkaline paper
0585326487 (electronic book)
9780585326481 (electronic book)
9780520057227
0520057228
128007891X
9781280078910
9786613520180
6613520187
9780520063297
0520063295
Standard No. 10.1525/9780520908789