Beer, Brewing, and the Boundaries of the Human in Early Modern English Culture

Exploring a wide range of written discourse on early modern brewing and the material features and practices contributing to those conversations, this book demonstrates the considerable role that discussions of drink played in defining the boundaries of human life and action in England and beyond.

The social meaning of drink was an ever-contested cultural site in the early modern Atlantic. From complaints about watered-down ale to suspicions around ingredients and imported foreign wines to the moral blame assigned to alehouses and inns for drunkenness and raucous behavior, early modern writers saw the fermentation process as just one of many sites in which drink signified change. Discussing beer and brewing meant defining the limits of human rationality, markers of individual and collective identity, and the nature of responsibility. This book’s interdisciplinary approach draws upon texts as varied as brewing manuals, manuscript receipt books, plays, broadside ballads, and joke books to show the two-way conversation between these complex cultural works and the materiality of fermented drink as a cultural artifact.

This book will be useful for graduate students and scholars of early modern English literature and early American literature, food studies, food history, and material culture.