Publisher's Synopsis
The term asceticism is used to describe various practices ranging from fasting, sexual abstinence or withdrawal from the world by living in the desert or on a column, to the mortification of the mystics and the silence of monks. All of these phenomena are linked to the relationship of the individual to himself and to society, and for this reason this volume analyses ideas of asceticism in Antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period in order to assess how they are related to the establishment of identity: to what extent is asceticism employed to constitute identity, to understand better one's own identity or to change it.
