“Fattening” Literary History

This essay maps recent developments in the field of fat studies in relation to questions of literature and history. It advocates a two-pronged approach to history, one that not only analyzes past representations of fatness but also interrogates the construction of historical narratives regarding those representations. The essay traces examples from recent scholarship that suggest promising directions for future work and offers a historically contextualized reading of two poems: Frances Cornford's “To a Fat Lady Seen from the Train” and G. K. Chesterton's “The Fat White Woman Speaks.”