- Title Pages
- Introduction
-
Part 1 The Medieval Glutton -
1. The Prestige of the Big Person -
2. Liquids, Fat, and Wind -
3. The Horizon of Fault -
4. The Fifteenth Century and the Contrasts of Slimming -
Part 2 The “Modern” Oaf -
5. The Shores of Laziness -
6. The Plural of Fat -
7. Exploring Images, Defining Terms -
8. Constraining the Flesh -
Part 3 From Oafishness to Powerlessness -
9. Inventing Nuance -
10. Stigmatizing Powerlessness -
11. Toning Up -
Part 4 The Bourgeois Belly -
12. The Weight of Figures -
13. Typology Fever -
14. From Chemistry to Energy -
15. From Energy to Diets -
Part 5 Toward the “Martyr” -
16. The Dominance of Aesthetics -
17. Clinical Obesity and Everyday Obesity -
18. The Thin Revolution -
19. Declaring “the Martyr” -
Part 6 Changes in the Contemporary Debate - Conclusion
- Index
- European Perspectives
The Shores of Laziness
The Shores of Laziness
- Chapter:
- (p.33) 5. The Shores of Laziness
- Source:
- The Metamorphoses of Fat
- Author(s):
Georges Vigarello
, C. Jon Delogu- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
This chapter describes how criticism of the “heavy” and “enormous” person changed in the sixteenth century. Indolence displeased; the useless was disquieting; and laziness became “the plague of human understanding.” At a time of intense social segregation and the nobility’s contempt for manual labor, the idea of “inactivity,” doing nothing, and softness was stigmatized more than that of “work.” A more profound new development was that the intensification of contempt touched the language. A negative culture surrounding size was stated more than ever before, though still indifferent to precise indicators and quantifiable measurements. Those with wide waists are repeatedly spoken of in strongly negative terms as “lacking spirit,” “knowing very little,” and “displeasing.” The word heavy (lourd) elicited linguistic inventiveness, stigmatizing awkwardness and torpor.
Keywords: fat, fat people, heaviness, stigma, sixteenth century, laziness, language
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- Title Pages
- Introduction
-
Part 1 The Medieval Glutton -
1. The Prestige of the Big Person -
2. Liquids, Fat, and Wind -
3. The Horizon of Fault -
4. The Fifteenth Century and the Contrasts of Slimming -
Part 2 The “Modern” Oaf -
5. The Shores of Laziness -
6. The Plural of Fat -
7. Exploring Images, Defining Terms -
8. Constraining the Flesh -
Part 3 From Oafishness to Powerlessness -
9. Inventing Nuance -
10. Stigmatizing Powerlessness -
11. Toning Up -
Part 4 The Bourgeois Belly -
12. The Weight of Figures -
13. Typology Fever -
14. From Chemistry to Energy -
15. From Energy to Diets -
Part 5 Toward the “Martyr” -
16. The Dominance of Aesthetics -
17. Clinical Obesity and Everyday Obesity -
18. The Thin Revolution -
19. Declaring “the Martyr” -
Part 6 Changes in the Contemporary Debate - Conclusion
- Index
- European Perspectives
