Starvation, Food Obsession and Identity

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/Francesca Calamita/Kathryn Robson: Eating Disorders: Disordered Eating? - Siobhán McIlvanney: «Impuissance» and «Culpabilité»: Reducing the Weight of Maternal Influence in Contemporary French Women's Narratives of Anorexia - Petra M. Bagley: The Austrian Art of Starvation as Depicted by Anna Mitgutsch and Helene Flöss - Francesca Calamita: On the Verge of Emotional Hunger: Anorexia, Bulimia and Interpersonal Relationships in Present-Day Italian Women's Writing - Teresa Ludden: Deviant Bodies and Eating Disorders in Ulrike Draesner's Mitgift and Karen Duve's Dies ist kein Liebeslied - Nathalie Morello: Anorexia, Anger, Agency: Investigating Quests for Self in Three Contemporary Narratives in French - Dearbhla McGrath: Trauma and Transformation: Eating Disorders in Marie Darrieussecq's Truismes - Sonja Stojanovic: «J'ai mangé, j'ai mangé» [I ate and ate]: Accumulation and Excess in Marie Darrieussecq's Truismes - Danila Cannamela: When Appearance Matters: A «Cover-Reading» of Briciole by Alessandra Arachi - Julie Rodgers: Double Voices and Splintered Selves: The Dialectic of Anorexia in Ying Chen's Querelle d'un squelette avec son double - Anna Aresi: The Fine Line: Narratives of Recovery from Anorexia in Italian and American Memoirs - Kathryn Robson: Reading the Anorexic Body: Eating Disorders in Contemporary French Women's Fiction - Petra M. Bagley/Francesca Calamita/Kathryn Robson: Writing Future Narratives of Eating Disorders