Introduction

Abstract The introduction sets out the book’s core argument that body size—fatness and thinness—assumed new significance in Germany from the late fifteenth to the early seventeenth centuries. During these tumultuous years, perceptions and practices of body size shifted dramatically, as the size and shape of people’s bodies attracted unprecedented attention. This account overturns the common assumption that concern with fatness and thinness is a modern phenomenon. Existing scholarship has shown that premodern fatness was viewed with ambivalence rather than appreciation, yet examining body size within the focused geographical, temporal, and cultural setting of early modern Germany reveals greater nuances in attitudes towards fatness and thinness. This prologue presents the book’s aim of uncovering the various ways in which body size was made to matter in this context. In so doing, it considers both the language and materiality of body size, and provides an overview of the book’s sources and structure.