Women in God's Kitchen: Cooking, Eating, and Spiritual Writing

Cristina Mazzoni

ISBN 10: 0826417604 / ISBN 13: 9780826417602

Published by Bloomsbury Academic, 2005

Former library book; May have limited writing in cover pages. Pages are unmarked. ~ ThriftBooks: Read More, Spend Less. Seller Inventory # G0826417604I4N10

Synopsis:

Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin once noted that 'nunneries in the old days were veritable storehouses of the most delectable tidbits.' Perhaps that is why the much-maligned Lucrezia Borgia is said to have truly felt at home only in the company of pious cloistered nuns. In his landmark study, Holy Anorexia, Rudolph Bell focused his attention on holy women who survived on nothing but the eucharistic wafer. Cristina Mazzoni, taking the opposite tack, savors the food writings and images of a broad spectrum of Catholic saints and holy women. A native of Italy and a splendid cook herself, Mazzoni accords due attention to her fellow countrywomen, as well she should given the importance of Italian cookery (Catherine of Genoa, Angela of Foligno, Gemma Galgani), but includes numerous other holy women and their cuisines as well: Germany (Hildegard of Bingen, Elisabeth of Schönau, and Margaret Ebner), France (Margaret Mary Alacoque, Thérèse of Lisieux), Spain (Teresa of Avila), colonial South America (Sor Juana Inès de la Cruz), England (Margery Kempe), and even the United States (Elizabeth Ann Seton, who was the first person born in the United States to be canonized by the Roman Catholic Church). In her Introduction, Mazzoni invites the reader 'to seek out and savor with me...the food concocted, dished out, bitten into, tasted, and swallowed in the writings of holy women: food that may be mundane, unexceptional, and commonplace, but food that may also be delicious, nutritious, indulgent, or healthful. Whether in the form of stockfish and stew or chocolate and jam, whether cooked as lasagna with greens or curdled into a fine or bitter cheese, this foodthrough metaphors and similes, through anecdotes and memoriesleads to mystical connections, underlines the presence of meaning even, or especially, in the midst of seeming meaninglessness, and leads us to share in the pleasure of cooking, eating, and learning at a divine table in God's kitchen.'

About the Author: Cristina Mazzoni is Professor of Romance Languages at the University of Vermont. She is the editor of Angela of Foligno's Memorial and author of Saint Hysteria: Neurosis, Mysticism, and Gender in European Culture, Maternal Impressions: Pregnancy and Childbirth in Literature, and Theory, and, with Rudolph Bell, The Voices of Gemma Galgani: The Life and Afterlife of a Modern Saint.'

Bibliographic Details

Title: Women in God's Kitchen: Cooking, Eating, and...
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Publication Date: 2005
Binding: Hardcover
Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: No Jacket