Starvation, Food Obsession and Identity ― Eating Disorders in Contemporary Women Writing

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.

Petra M. Bagley is Senior Lecturer in German in the School of Language and Global Studies at the University of Central Lancashire, Preston.

Francesca Calamita is Assistant Professor, General Faculty, in Italian Studies at the University of Virginia.

Kathryn Robson is Senior Lecturer in French in the School of Modern Languages at Newcastle University.