Una fame da toro. Riflessioni sull’ ingordigia nella cultura austriaca

Abstract

The topic of food excess and its experience has been of interest for personalities from very different backgrounds, each of them driven by a predominant reason for expressing a strong censure. Exemplary cases will be taken from a considerable lapse of time, going from the seventeenth century to the present day, and such excursus shall be a means to trace the evolution of the Austrian idea of greediness, seen in its religious, moral, psychological, medical, social and even comic implications. Starting from the anathema thrown by the Baroque preacher Abraham a Sancta Clara against the sin of gluttony, we will eventually deal with the concept of bulimia as an illness to be treated and cured.