- 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
Inventing Nuance
Inventing Nuance
- Chapter:
- (p.79) 9. Inventing Nuance
- Source:
- The Metamorphoses of Fat
- Author(s):
Georges Vigarello
, C. Jon Delogu- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
This chapter describes how the judgment of contours changed in the Age of Enlightenment. Numerical measuring of weight appeared in the medical literature, and a ranking of volumes also appeared in the most ordinary circumstances. The social milieu depicted in engravings and paintings was signified and even ranked by, among other things, different physical “thicknesses,” even if the associated vocabulary that would explicitly define traits came late and remained imprecise. The history of the fat person was the history of this slowly arriving consciousness of the variety of forms and their possible progressions, while, at the same time, the will to weigh less was not necessarily intense. The culture of the Enlightenment was more attentive to the individual and therefore also to the individualization of size.
Keywords: fat, fat people, contours, Age of Enlightenment, weight measurement, volume, weight, body size
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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
