Gluttony: The Seven Deadly Sins
by Francine Prose
Seven Deadly Sins - NYPL Lectures in Humanity (2), New York Public Library Lectures in Humanities
On This Page
Description
In America, notes acclaimed novelist Francine Prose, we are obsessed with food and diet. And what is this obsession with food except a struggle between sin and virtue, overeating and self-control--a struggle with the fierce temptations of gluttony.In Gluttony, Francine Prose serves up a marvelous banquet of witty and engaging observations on this most delicious of deadly sins. She traces how our notions of gluttony have evolved along with our ideas about salvation and damnation, health and show more illness, life and death. Offering a livelysmorgasbord that ranges from Augustine's Confessions and Chaucer's Pardoner's Tale, to Petronius's Satyricon and Dante's Inferno, she shows that gluttony was in medieval times a deeply spiritual matter, but today we have transformed gluttony from a sin into an illness--it is the horrors ofcholesterol and the perils of red meat that we demonize. Indeed, the modern take on gluttony is that we overeat out of compulsion, self-destructiveness, or to avoid intimacy and social contact. But gluttony, Prose reminds us, is also an affirmation of pleasure and of passion. She ends the book witha discussion of M.F.K. Fisher's idiosyncratic defense of one of the great heroes of gluttony, Diamond Jim Brady, whose stomach was six times normal size."The broad, shiny face of the glutton," Prose writes, "has been--and continues to be--the mirror in which we see ourselves, our hopes and fears, our darkest dreams and deepest desires." Never have we delved more deeply into this mirror than in this insightful and stimulating book. show lessTags
Recommendations
Member Reviews
a fun book on gluttony. describes the plethora of streams that make the river of gluttony.
Ratings
Members
- Recently Added By
Author Information
63+ Works 13,012 Members
Francine Prose was born on April 1, 1947. She graduated from Radcliffe College in 1968. She received the PEN Translation Prize in 1988 and received a Guggenheim fellowship in 1991. Francine Prose novel The Glorious Ones, has been adapted into a musical with the same title by Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty. It ran at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater show more at Lincoln Center in New York City in the fall of 2007. Prose has served as president of PEN American Center, a New York City based literary society of writers, editors, and translators that works to advance literature in 2007 and 2008. Prose novel, Blue Angel, a satire about sexual harassment on college campuses, was a finalist for the National Book Award. One of her novels, Household Saints, was adapted for a movie by Nancy Savoca. In 2014 her title Lovers at the Chameleon Club - Paris 1932, made The New York Times Best Seller List. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Series
Work Relationships
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Gluttony: The Seven Deadly Sins
Classifications
- Genres
- Nonfiction, Philosophy, Religion & Spirituality, General Nonfiction, History
- DDC/MDS
- 178 — Philosophy & psychology Ethics Ethics of consumption
- LCC
- BV4627 .G5 .P76 — Philosophy, Psychology and Religion Practical Theology Practical Theology Practical religion. The Christian life Moral theology Sins and vices
- BISAC
Statistics
- Members
- 245
- Popularity
- 133,168
- Reviews
- 1
- Rating
- (3.45)
- Languages
- 5 — English, German, Greek, Spanish, Thai
- Media
- Paper
- ISBNs
- 6
- ASINs
- 1
