Women, Food, and Diet in the Middle Ages : : Balancing the Humours / / Theresa Vaughan.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Amsterdam University Press Complete eBook-Package 2020
• VerfasserIn: Vaughan, Theresa,
• Place / Publishing House: Amsterdam : : Amsterdam University Press, , [2020]; ©2020
• Year of Publication: 2020
• Language: English
• Series: Premodern Health, Disease, and Disability ; 5
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (236 p.)

What 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 when considering the lower social classes which are typically overlooked in the written record. What can we know about women, food, medicine, and diet in the Middle Ages and how does the written medical tradition interact with folk medicine and other cultural factors in both understanding women's bodies and their roles as healers and food providers.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Table of Contents -- List of Figures -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1. Women as Healers, Women as Food Producers -- 2. Medieval Theories of Nutrition and Health -- 3. The Special Problem of Nutrition and Women’s Health -- 4. Theoretical Medicine vs. Practical Medicine -- 5. The Trotula and the Works of Hildegard of Bingen -- 6. The Legacy of the Trotula -- 7. Women’s Diets and Standards of Beauty -- 8. Religious Conflict and Religious Accommodation -- 9. Evolving Advice for Women’s Health Through Diet -- Bibliography -- Index