Description
Book SynopsisWhat can anthropological and folkloristic approaches to food, gender, and medicine tell us about these topics in the Middle Ages beyond the textual evidence itself?
Women, Food, and Diet in the Middle Ages: Balancing the Humours uses these approaches to look at the textual traditions of dietary recommendations for women’s health, placed within the context of the larger cultural concerns of gender roles and Church teachings about women. Women are expected to be nurturers, healers, and the primary locus of food provisioning for families, especially women of the lower social classes, typically overlooked in the written record. This work illuminates what we can know about women, food, medicine, and diet in the Middle Ages, and examines how the written medical tradition interacts with folk medicine and other cultural factors in both understanding women’s bodies and their roles as healers and food providers.
Trade Review"By exploring intersections of medicine, food and gender, Vaughan makes a valuable contribution to research about women in the medieval period. [...] This volume’s examination of Greco-Roman medical theory combined with analysis of medieval medical and religious texts helps to situate it as an important advancement in understanding medieval women and women’s bodies."
- Judith Lanzendorfer,
Digest, Vol. 9, No. 1
"[...] a welcome and much needed study of the space where gender, eating, and wellness all came together in premodern Europe. [...] Vaughan’s wide lens and fluid approach permit her to present a fuller portrait of the relationship between premodern women and food than is typical."
- Danielle Callegari,
Early Modern Women, Vol. 17, No. 1
"Vaughan does several things very well in this book. The scope is sweeping and interesting. Clearly written and accessible, it should teach well to undergraduates new to the study of gender in the Middle Ages; each chapter can stand on its own."
- Belle S. Tuten,
Journal of British Studies, Vol. 61, No. 3
Table of ContentsAcknowledgements
Introduction
Chapter One: Women as Healers, Women as Food Producers
Chapter Two: Medieval Theories of Nutrition and Health
Chapter Three: The Special Problems of Nutrition and Women's Health
Chapter Four: Medicine vs. Practical Medicine
Chapter Five: The Trotula and the Works of Hildegard of Bingen
Chapter Six: The Legacy of the Trotula
Chapter Seven: Women's Diets and Standards of Beauty
Chapter Eight: Religious Conflict and Religious Accommodation
Chapter Nine: Evolving Advice for Women's Health Through Diet
Bibliography
Index
