How to Drink: A Classical Guide to the Art of Imbibing

Social History of Alcohol and Drugs, 24.2 , 2010

Readers of this journal will be more aware than most that drinking has been studied from an array of disciplinary perspectives, attracting interest from an- thropologists, psychologists, social historians, economists, literary critics and many others. Recently, however, alcohol also seems to have caught the eye of philosophers. We should hardly be surprised at this: by acting on the mind via the body, alcohol blurs the Cartesian distinction between res extensa and res cogita that has dominated western thought for over four hundred years. Furthermore, while fermentation is a natural process, alcoholic drinks arise from human actions which rely on more or less complex forms of technology. Therefore, they raise important questions about the distinction between na- ture and the world of made objects. Of course, drink is also simultaneously a source of both pleasure and harm: it foregrounds the problems of distinguish- ing between control and excess, virtue and vice, and – in the case of addiction – between vice and disease. It is, therefore, an eminently philosophical thing.

The Social History of Alcohol and Drugs, 2005

This collection of twelve essays derives from a conference in July 2001 at the University of Reading entitled "Drink and Conviviality in Early Modern England." The topics covered in the collection range from the representation of conviviality by such writers as Ben Jonson, Robert Herrick, and Thomas Killigrew to medical and scientific theories about wine and beer during the period. Other areas of interest explored in the essays are the relationships of gender and sexuality to conviviality, the connections between conviviality and politics in ballads and anacreontics, and the roles of national stereotyping in early modern drinking cultures. The contributors to the volume offer expertise in literature, history, humanities, fine arts, and sociology to their studies of conviviality in seventeenth-century England, and the results are often impressive. Broken into five general areas-Identity and Community, Politicized Drink, Drink and Gender, Improvement, and Excess-the variety of subjects covered in this relatively brief collection provide for engaging discussions of drink and conviviality. As noted in the collection's title, the "pleasing sinne" of alcohol consumption produced ambivalent responses in seventeenth-century drinkers. Smyth begins his introduction to the volume with a fine discussion of such ambivalence in one of the period's most famous drinkers, Samuel Pepys: Smyth records the dizzying array of drinks found in the Diary such as "ale, cider, beer, brandy, buttermilk, chocolate, gruel, elder spirits, julep, mead, metheglin, water, milk, coffee, orange juice, posset, tea, strong waters, whey, and many varieties of wine" (xiii). Overindulgence of the alcoholic beverages on this list induced, in Smyth's words, the "familiar Pepysian swing between delight and guilty regret" (xiii). Pepys's convivial pleasure attendant upon alcohol consumption is counterbalanced in the Diary by numerous resolutions to quit drinking, typically written in the grip of hangovers. Such ambivalence toward the excess of pleasure and the dearth of abstinence finds expression in the subjects of the other essays in the volume and indeed, might be seen as the key conceptual point linking the chapters in the collection. This commonality provides a strong argumentative "backbone" for A Pleasing

Social History, 2016

Good reference books on the history of alcohol remain few and far between, despite increased interest in the area in the last 20 years. Until now, alcohol studies has relied on a range of specialist studies and a small number of general surveys such as Greenaway's Drink and British Politics since 1830, Nicholls's The Politics of Alcohol, and Schmid and Schmidt-Haberkamps's Drink in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries.(1) Paul Jennings's new title in Routledge's 'Perspectives in Economic and Social History' series is an extremely valuable addition to the growing body of work on the history of drink from one of the most influential researchers in the drinking studies field. Described in the publisher's description as an introduction to alcohol studies, A History of Drink and the English, 1500-2000 is this, and much more. It gives students and researchers access to Jennings's encyclopaedic knowledge of drink history from over 20 years' study, making this book a real treat for specialists. Jennings employs a large and wide-ranging variety of sources, from taxation data and court reports to literary and theatrical renditions. Nonetheless, he manages this densely-packed history adeptly to create a very readable, often lively account, accessible to general as well as specialist readers. The book's combination of thematic and chronological organisation makes it easy to navigate. These key themes cover a range common to all disciplines of alcohol studies. Coverage of an impressive 500-year period, one of the longest periods of any history devoted to drink, makes it an excellent introductory survey. I have already found it invaluable for teaching undergraduates on our 'Drink: A History' module at Bristol. Each chapter begins with a well-considered overview of what it will cover and why, with a summary of what has been written on this area to date. Chapters are structured in chronological sections that give readers the option to focus on particular periods; a useful addition given the broad chronological span. The dense referencing is well chosen, demonstrating the breadth of sources. Each chapter, in addition to comprehensive footnotes, is also followed by an individual bibliography-user-friendly for both teaching and research. Although the key themes outlined in the seven chapters are based on practical aspects-'Drinking', 'Producers and sellers', 'Places and spaces', 'Meanings', 'Drunks', 'Anti-drink', and 'Regulation'-the book also attends to themes such as gender and class thoughtfully throughout. There is a slight northern bias in certain sections. However, this is only partly resultant from Jennings's personal research interests in this area of the UK. There is a good rationale for emphasising the changing drinking culture in the north in such

Frontiers of Philosophy in China, 14.1, 2019

Greek philosophers in general share a strong commitment to a life of reason and excellence. It is therefore surprising to see some of them argue in defense of symposiastic drunkenness. This essay investigates several such arguments. Its main source texts are books I and II of Plato's Laws and a passage in the excerpts on Peripatetic ethics in the doxography of Arius Didymus. The arguments are analyzed and situated in a broader cultural and philosophical context. The Peripatetic passage approves of drunkenness as an aspect of certain established forms of communal activity, with the caveat that the virtuous person will not desire drunkenness for its own sake. While it is clear that the Peripatetic author grounds the need for communal activities in our social nature, he fails to justify the existence of communal activities that lead to drunkenness. Plato's arguments, by contrast, sketch out and justify a new, non-traditional framework for certain highly regulated forms of communal drunkenness. His first main argument relates to the goal of testing and nursing self-control through exposure to wine, while the second is based on the idea that the rejuvenating force of wine renders mature men again susceptible to the formative influence of song and dance as vehicles of good ethical qualities.

Association of Art Historians Annual Conference, 2013

Drinks and drinkers permeate the history of art. Since the Renaissance, the social, cultural and symbolic functions of drinking have featured widely, in historical, religious and mythological painting, as well as in genre scenes, portraiture and independent still-lifes. By representing the bodily act of drinking—at once human necessity, pleasure and social habit—these works constitute a corpus rich in social, cultural and anthropological implications. The analysis of drinks and drinkers, however, has long been left to food historians. Taking as its focus the fruitful exchange between art and food, this session examines the impact of drinks on the formal analysis of art, on aesthetic theories and notions of creation, as well as on artistic sociabilities and sensory encounters. If we consider the drink as a global object, then images of drinkers form an ideal perspective from which to investigate not only the relationship between sensory experience and the social and cultural dimensions of artistic representation, but also the underlying tensions between human production and necessity peculiar to any society. Papers will address the shifting construction of the drinker across space, time and media, from the seventeenth-century Netherlands to twentieth-century Britain, from imaginary depictions in paint to the concrete setting of the pub. Exploring manifestations of the drinker both divine and decadent, the session will aim to shed new light on the institution of drinking, on acts of consumption both natural and excessive, and on the problematic relationship between creativity and intoxication.

Journal of Ethnology and Folkloristics, 2016

Christian Spirituality and Science vol 8 (2010): 2-18.

Visual Resources 28.4, 2012

States of Intoxication: The Place of Alcohol in Civilization, 2018

The chapter examines social pathologies related to alcohol as rooted in social pathologies ‘of’ contemporary civilisation, seeing them as rooted in fundamental features of the civilising process. State formation is shown to be the key historical process that has shaped drinking culture, which has had the effect of disrupting the timeless social forms that have structured drinking occasions: rites de passage and gift relations, as described by Victor Turner and Marcel Mauss. This diagnosis is offered as an attempt to answer a riddle set by leading alcohol researchers such as Mary Douglas and Dwight B. Heath, who have made the claim that outside of complex, differentiated societies, alcohol problems are rare. The argument of the chapter is that state formation processes can help us explain this, as it subverts the highly ritualised, socially integrative nature of drinking. It is postulated that an anthropologically informed historical sociology is crucial to understanding drinking cultures and their problems, as they provide comparative-historical reference points with which to examine the issue, and insight into the key dynamics that have shaped it.