TY  - BOOK
AU  - Petra M. Bagley
AU  - Francesca Calamita
AU  - Kathryn Robson
PY  - 2018
CY  - Oxford, United Kingdom
PB  - Peter Lang Verlag
SN  - 2235-4123
SN  - 9781787074408
TI  - Starvation, Food Obsession and Identity
T2  - Eating Disorders in Contemporary Women’s Writing
DO  - 10.3726/b10998
UR  - https://www.peterlang.com/document/1055404
N2  - Anorexia, bulimia, binge eating and troubled relationships with food and bodies have been depicted by writers across a variety of languages and cultures, since before the medicalisation of eating disorders in the late nineteenth century to the present day. This cross-cultural volume explores the  fictional portrayal of these self-destructive yet arguably self-empowering behaviours in contemporary French, German and Italian women’s writing. Covering autobiography, fiction and autofiction, the chapters included here outline different aspects of the cultural encodings of anorexia in Europe today. Contributors analyse how literary texts not only recount but also interrogate wider cultural representations of eating disorders, particularly with regard to concepts of (gender) identity, the body, the relationship with the mother, and the relation between food and words. This volume seeks to draw out the multiple meanings of anorexia as both a rebellion against and conformity to dominant (and gendered) socio-political structures. It explores the ways in which contemporary women’s novels and memoirs both describe and, importantly, also redefine eating disorders in present-day Europe.
KW  - eating disorders, women’s writing, the body
LA  - English
ER  -