Bread of Dreams: Food and Fantasy in Early Modern Europe - Couverture souple

Camporesi, Piero

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 0226092585 ISBN 13 : 9780226092584

Editeur : University of Chicago Press, 1996

Synopsis

Bread of Dreams This study examines the imaginative world of poor and ordinary people in pre-industrial Europe. It develops the claim that many people in early-modern Europe lived in a state of almost permanent hallucination, drugged by their hunger or by bread adulterated with hallucinogenic herbs. Full description

A propos du livre

Quatrième de couverture :

Piero Camporesi is one of the most original and exciting culturalhistorians in Europe today. In this remarkable book he examines theimaginative world of poor and ordinary people in pre–industrialEurope, exploring their everyday preoccupations, fears andfantasies.

Camporesi develops the startling claim that many people in earlymodern Europe lived in a state of almost permanent hallucination,drugged by their hunger or by bread adulterated with hallucinogenicherbs. The use of opiate products, administered even to childrenand infants, was widespread and was linked to a popular mythologyin which herbalists and exorcists were important cultural figures.Through a careful reconstruction of the everyday imaginative lifeof peasants, beggars and the poor, Camporesi presents a vivid anddisconcerting image of early modern Europe as a vast laboratory ofdreams.

Bread of Dreams is a rich and engaging book which provides afresh insight into the everyday life and attitudes of people inpre–industrial Europe. Camporesi′s vision is breathtaking and hiswork will be much discussed among social and cultural historians.This edition includes a Preface by Roy Porter, Professor of theHistory of Medicine at the Wellcome Institute for the History ofMedicine.

Revue de presse :

"A remarkable and exciting recovery of an earlier cosmologyelaborated around bread and body.′ Nature

"Stimulating and fun to read." The Historian

"This is a serious book which makes the body in early modernEurope at the same time more comprehensible and still morestrange." Social History of Medicine

"Piero Camporesi confronts us here with a baroque panorama ofjarring variations, lurid juxtapositions, and vertiginous shifts insetting and scale ... Camporesi insists on being the dramaturge anddevil′s advocate of an alternative history." Speculum

"In Camporesi′s breathtaking vision, covering several centuriesof early modern peasant society, and focusing chiefly but notexclusively on Italy, real social history and l′histoire desmentalites fuse." Roy Porter, Wellcome Institute for theHistory of Medicine

À propos de cette édition

• Éditeur: University of Chicago Press
• Date d'édition: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0226092585
• ISBN 13: 9780226092584
• Reliure: Paperback
• Nombre de pages: 224