Bread of Dreams
eBook - ePub

Bread of Dreams

Food and Fantasy in Early Modern Europe

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eBook - ePub

Bread of Dreams

Food and Fantasy in Early Modern Europe

Book details
Table of contents
Citations

About This Book

Piero Camporesi is one of the most original and exciting cultural historians in Europe today. In this remarkable book he examines the imaginative world of poor and ordinary people in pre-industrial Europe, exploring their everyday preoccupations, fears and fantasies.

Camporesi develops the startling 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. The use of opiate products, administered even to children and infants, was widespread and was linked to a popular mythology in which herbalists and exorcists were important cultural figures. Through a careful reconstruction of the everyday imaginative life of peasants, beggars and the poor, Camporesi presents a vivid and disconcerting image of early modern Europe as a vast laboratory of dreams.

Bread of Dreams is a rich and engaging book which provides a fresh insight into the everyday life and attitudes of people in pre-industrial Europe. Camporesi's vision is breathtaking and his work will be much discussed among social and cultural historians. This edition includes a Preface by Roy Porter, Professor of the History of Medicine at the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine.

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Yes, you can access Bread of Dreams by Piero Camporesi in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in History & Early Modern History. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Information

Publisher
Polity
Year
2023
ISBN
9781509539550
Edition
1
Topic
History
Subtopic
Early Modern History
Index
History

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Table of Contents
  3. Title
  4. Copyright
  5. Preface by Roy Porter
  6. Introduction
  7. 1 The ‘Disease of Wretchedness’
  8. 2 Elusive Bread
  9. 3 Sacred and Profane Cannibalism
  10. 4 ‘They Set Out into the World of the Vagabond’
  11. 5 ‘They Rotted in Their Own Dung’
  12. 6 The World Turned Upside Down
  13. 7 ‘Famine of Living’ and ‘Times of Suspicion’
  14. 8 Night-time
  15. 9 Ritual Battles and Popular Frenzies
  16. 10 Medicina Pauperum
  17. 11 ‘Tightness of Purse’
  18. 12 Collective Vertigo
  19. 13 Hyperbolic Dreams
  20. 14 Artificial Paradises
  21. 15 Poppyseed Bread
  22. 16 The ‘Fickle and Verminous Colony’
  23. 17 Putrid Worms and Vile Snails
  24. 18 A City of Mummies
  25. 19 The Triumph of Poverty
  26. Index
  27. End User License Agreement