| Reading Eating Disorders: Writings on Bulimia and Anorexia as Confessions of American Culture Contributor(s): Goetsch, Paul (Editor), Olson, Greta (Author) |
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ISBN: 3631506198 ISBN-13: 9783631506196 Publisher: Peter Lang Gmbh, Internationaler Verlag Der W OUR PRICE: $108.78 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: April 2003 |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Psychology | Psychopathology - Eating Disorders - Literary Criticism | American - General - Foreign Language Study | English As A Second Language |
| Dewey: 616.852 |
| LCCN: 2003275658 |
| Series: Neue Studien Zur Anglistik Und Amerikanistik, |
| Physical Information: 308 pages |
| Themes: - Sex & Gender - Feminine |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: Reading Eating Disorders uses literary texts as a key to open the door of American culture. Novels and poems on disordered eating reveal America's bulimic relationship to food and the tendency to punish individuals - particularly women and the poor - for not being slender. These texts partake of the confessional ethos in American public culture - the need to testify to and hear about intimate physical details. Tracing the history of eating disorders and Western culture's idealization of thinness with reference to canonical literary works such as Christina Rossetti's Goblin Market (1859) and Samuel Richardson's Clarissa (1747-8), the author illustrates anorexia, bulimia, and the binge-eating disorder using contemporary accounts of these disorders. A cultural studies approach to literature is taken to describe how writings on eating disorders reveal the political and economic world out of which they are written. |