1st Edition
Fat Bodies in Early Modern Europe
Introduction: Fat Bodies in Early Modern Europe
Holly Fletcher, Christine Ott, and Jill Burke
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 Medicalisation of Girth
Alexander Pyrges
2 Fatness and Fertility: Childbearing and the Size of Women’s Bodies in Early Modern Germany
Holly Fletcher
PART II Cultural Hierarchies
3 The Fat Female Body in Angelo Beolco’s Anti-Classicist Literary Portraits
Andrea Baldan
4 Silenus, as a Vase: The Fat Man’s Body at the School of Fontainebleau (c. 1530–c. 1570)
Scarlett Butler
5 Laughter, Guilt, Anxiety: Dealing With Fat Animals in Early Modern Europe
Christine Ott
PART III Shifting Meanings
6 Heavy Debates: Weighing Fatness in a Spanish Renaissance Dialogue
Pablo García Piñar
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’
Roberta Colbertaldo
8 Robust Hero/Fat Fool: Early Modern Fat Stereotypes in the Portrait of Alessandro dal Borro
Jill Burke
Biography
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).
