This book explores the various manifestations of eating disorders in literature, including cannibalism, the magic attributes of food, religiously motivated fasting, and children's eating problems, from the classical period to Toni Morrison, in American, British, and European texts.

The underlying, unifying theme is the role of eating choices as a means of self-empowerment. The texts discussed are different in genre (narrative, drama, epic and lyric poetry, and an autobiographical memoir), but they all reveal, in whatever setting, the individual's longing for autonomy of some kind. In...