This book examines drinking and attitudes to alcohol consumption in late medieval and early modern England, France, and Italy, especially as they related to sexual and violent behavior and to gender relations. According to widespread beliefs, the consumption of alcohol led to increased sexual activity among both men and women, and it also led to disorderly conduct among women and violent conduct among men. Dr Lynn shows how alcohol was a fundamental part of the diets of most people, including women, resulting in daily drinking of large amounts of ale, beer, or wine. This study offers an intimate insight into both the altered states induced by alcohol, and, by opposition, into normal relations in family, community, and society.

Traditional Europe had high levels of violence and of alcohol consumption, both higher than they are in modern Western societies, where studies demonstrate a link between violence and alcohol. A. Lynn Martin uses an anthropological approach to examine drinking, drinking establishments, violence, and disorder, and compares the wine-producing south with the beer-drinking north and Catholic France and Italy with Protestant England, and explores whether alcohol consumption can also explain the violence and disorder of traditional Europe. Both Catholic and Protestant moralists believed in the link, and they condemned drunkenness and drinking establishments for causing violence and disorder. They did not advocate complete abstinence, however, for alcoholic beverages had an important role in most people's diets. Less appreciated by the moralists was alcohol's function as the ubiquitous social lubricant and the increasing importance of alehouses and taverns as centers of popular recreation. The study utilizes both quantitative and qualitative evidence from a wide variety of sources to question the beliefs of the moralists and the assumptions of modern scholars about the role of alcohol and drinking establishments in causing violence and disorder. It ends by analyzing the often-conflicting regulations of local, regional, and national governments that attempted to ensure that their citizens had a reliable supply of good drink at a reasonable cost but also to control who drank what, where, when, and how. No other comparable book examines the relationship of alcohol to violence and disorder during this period.

This book attempts to challenge the canonical gender concept while trying to specify what gender was in the medieval and early modern world. It tests, verifies, and challenges the methodology and use the concept(s) of gender specifically applicable to the period of great change and transition. The volume contains theoretical discussion supplemented by case studies of specific practices such as mysticism, witchcraft, crime, and sexual behavior.

This book examines how the profound religious, political, and intellectual shifts that characterize the early modern period in Europe are inextricably linked to cultural uses of alcohol in Europe and the Atlantic world. Combining recent work on the history of drink with innovative new research, the eight contributing scholars explore themes such as identity, consumerism, gender, politics, colonialism, religion, state-building, and more through the revealing lens of the pervasive drinking cultures of early modern peoples. Alcohol had a place at nearly every European table and a role in much of early modern experience, from building personal bonds via social and ritual drinking to fueling economies at both micro and macro levels. At the same time, drinking was also at the root of a host of personal tragedies, including domestic violence in the home and human trafficking across the Atlantic. Alcohol in the Early Modern World provides a fascinating re-examination of pre-modern beliefs about and experiences with intoxicating beverages.

Focusing on cases of extramarital sex, Johanna Rickman investigates fornication, adultery and bastard bearing among the English nobility from about 1560 to 1630. She analyzes cases of illicit sex from a gendered perspective, illuminating the place of women in aristocratic culture, both as individual historical subjects and as a social group. Her sources include collections of family papers, state papers, literary texts, and legal documents.

A collection of original essays, Saints, Sinners, and Sisters showcases the diverse questions currently being asked by gender scholars dealing with French, Netherlandish and German art from the medieval and early modern periods. Moving beyond the reclamation of personalities and oeuvres of 'lost' female artists, the contributors pose questions about gender and sex within specific historical contexts, addressing such issues as intended audience, use of the object, and patronage. These avenues of inquiry intersect with larger cultural questions concerning societal control of women. The book's three sections, 'Saints,' 'Sinners,' and 'Sisters, Wives, Poets' are each preceded by a concise introductory essay, detailing themes and offering reflective comparisons of theses and information. In 'Saints,' contributors look at women who were positive exemplar used by society to uphold standards. In the second section, the essays focus on the power of women's sexuality. The third section expands beyond the customary dichotomous division of the first two to examine women in diverse roles not widely studied as positions of women in those times. This final section expands our definitions of women's responsibilities and realigns them historically; it argues that women, and thus gender, need to be understood within a much broader historical context and beyond simplistic approaches sometimes superimposed by present-day readers on past times. This volume answers an acute need for research on the art of Northern Europe prior to the 20th century, and highlights the possibilities of new directions in the field. The effect of the new scholarship presented here is to broaden the discursive field, allowing fluidity of disciplinary boundaries, resulting in a volume that is illuminating to historians of more than art alone.