History og obesity: "The belly of Paris" (1973) de Zola

Abstract

This article analysed "The Belly of Paris" (1873), of Emile Zola, published in the late nineteenth century. The material is a primary historical source of the obesity resignification period, contributing to the sociocultural history of obesity. The methodology consisted of reading the text in search of passages that referred to the condition, followed by extraction and transcription, and complete analysis and interpretation, which aim to highlight some aspects in the text. With the analysis, there was one evaluative ambivalence toward corpulence, the body fat and obesity, as well as the ethical, aesthetic, cultural, moral, political and social associations. Finally, it was understood that the purpose of the work was an attempt to link the resignified condition negatively to certain political and ideological conceptions of the author.