Rudolph M. Bell

Oh, this was... not good. There are some interesting parallels between modern anorexia nervosa and the disordered eating practices of medieval holy women, but the cultural contexts are so different that terming the practices of the latter 'holy anorexia' is illogical, and creates a false typology. Bell often treats the primary sources—mostly hagiographical texts—literally, and seems to display no awareness of the genre conventions and tropes which defined such texts in the Middle Ages. He also frequently makes psychoanalytical interpretations of these women based on descriptions of their behaviour and feelings written by other people for didactic purposes. There are so many reasons why that's... not really good scholarly practice, and there is not enough of an analytical framework to connect this individual psychological explanation for the emergence of anorexia to prevailing socio-cultural developments.

I also don't have enough background in psychology/medicine to gauge if Bell's description of modern anorexics is accurate, but the patronising manner in which he describes the 'typical' anorexic was enough to make me very wary. Note: describing women, in a non-ironic manner, as 'uppity'? Is rather a red flag. There are other things even more irritating, but they may well be triggering to relate. Avoid.… (más)

Saints and Society is a macroscopic survey of the lives of almost nine hundred saints of the Catholic Church who lived between 1000 and 1700. As a gathering together of data, it's a very useful resource, and some of the methodologies which they employ are things which might be useful for me in my own work. The text which the authors derived from their statistics, however, is something of a disappointment. They seem to miss a number of opportunities to tease out the links between social and religious history, and I think some of their conclusions about the interstices of class, gender and ethnicity are plain wrong. I suppose part of that is a function of the fact that this was written in the early 80s, and that such an area of research was still very much in its infancy; this was a very important book then, but must be read with a lot of caution now. It must be read with something of a tolerance for clunky language—at times, the syntax verges on the tortuous, and there is no excuse for that much use of the passive voice.… (más)

Horrible! He may understand anorexia, but Bell clearly doesn't have much understanding of medieval life and spirituality. The parallels he draws between saints' ascetic behavior and modern anorexia are interesting, and certainly an indication that there are patterns in women's behavior throughout history, but the cultural context is so different that anorexia is not a logical diagnosis for medieval women at all. He takes the primary sources way too literally, and doesn't understand the tropes and conventions that govern medieval hagiographical texts. He understands the texts literally when it is convenient to his argument, but then explains away points that are not convenient.… (más)