Fat Bodies in Early Modern Europe

Holly Fletcher is a research fellow at University College London, focusing on early modern material culture, bodies, health, and environments. Her first book is Body Size in Early Modern Germany (2026).Christine Ott is a professor of French and Italian literature at Goethe-Universität, Frankfurt, focusing on food cultures, concepts of the body, and gastro-myths. She recently co-edited the special issue Fat Worlds. Feasters and Loafers in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times (2023).Jill Burke is a professor of history at the University of Edinburgh, focusing on the body and its representation in early modern Italy. Her most recent book is How to Be A Renaissance Woman. The Untold History of Beauty and Female Creativity (2023).

• Introduction: Fat Bodies in Early Modern Europe Part I: Fatness, Health and Community 1. ‘No Age Did Ever Afford More Instances of Corpulency’: Obesity as a Collective Condition and the Early Modern Medicalization of Girth 2. Fatness and Fertility: Childbearing and the Size of Women’s Bodies in Early Modern Germany Part II: Cultural Hierarchies 3. The Fat Female Body in Angelo Beolco’s Anti-Classicist Literary Portraits 4. Silenus, as a Vase: The Fat Man’s Body at the School of Fontainebleau (c.1530-c.1570) 5. Laughter, Guilt, Anxiety: Dealing with Fat Animals in Early Modern Europe Part III: Shifting Meanings 6. Heavy Debates: Weighing Fatness in a Spanish Renaissance Dialogue 7. How to Fragment a Perfect Microcosm: The Sphere as the Shape of Fat Bodies in Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors and Cyrano’s ‘Contre un gros homme’ 8. Robust Hero/Fat Fool: Early Modern Fat Stereotypes in the Portrait of Alessandro dal Borro