In the Medieval Tavern
It's the time of year for parties and conviviality. In the spirit of the season, here are some online resources for researching medieval taverns.
Although the tavern scene is a common trope in fantasy and historical novels, taverns and other drinking establishments haven't received a great deal of attention from historians. J.J. Jusserand's brief description of travellers' lodgings in the fourteenth century still seems to set the scene better than any of the more recent scholarship.
Recently, an award-winning student paper by Samantha Sagui has pulled together some scarce resources on English alehouses and taverns to answer questions like "What did drinking houses look like?" "Who came to them?" and "Who ran drinking houses?". You can read the whole thing online at medievalists.net. Among the things I learned from this paper was that English medieval drinking establishments were simply named after their proprietors until the middle of the fourteenth century. It was only after the Black Death that they began to receive names like The Lamb or The Cardinal's Hat.
If you want to study the tavern as a literary symbol in itself, Andrew Cowell's book At Play in the Tavern: Signs, Coins and Bodies in the Middle Ages may be of interest.
A more entertaining read (if you ask me) is A. Lynn Martin's article "The Role of Drinking in the Male Construction of Unruly Women" in the collection Medieval Sexualities: A Casebook. Apparently men weren't the only ones getting sloshed in medieval drinking establishments... and that worried them. The entire book is available as a .pdf here. (The article starts on page 100.) I'm not sure if it's a legal copy; if it disappears, you can still see most of the article, minus the first two pages, at Google Books.
A tavern also requires drinking songs. Fortunately, the wandering university students of the high Middle Ages have left us many examples. John Addington Symonds translated several of them in his book Wine, Women and Song. Sadly, the tunes to these songs have been lost. However, Arany Zoltan supplies a lively interpretation here.
Finally, drinking establishments can be studied through medieval images. Check out the collection of links assembled by Karen Larsdatter.
Happy holidays everyone, and remember to drink safely!
White wine, from the Tacuinum Sanitatis.
Although the tavern scene is a common trope in fantasy and historical novels, taverns and other drinking establishments haven't received a great deal of attention from historians. J.J. Jusserand's brief description of travellers' lodgings in the fourteenth century still seems to set the scene better than any of the more recent scholarship.
Recently, an award-winning student paper by Samantha Sagui has pulled together some scarce resources on English alehouses and taverns to answer questions like "What did drinking houses look like?" "Who came to them?" and "Who ran drinking houses?". You can read the whole thing online at medievalists.net. Among the things I learned from this paper was that English medieval drinking establishments were simply named after their proprietors until the middle of the fourteenth century. It was only after the Black Death that they began to receive names like The Lamb or The Cardinal's Hat.
If you want to study the tavern as a literary symbol in itself, Andrew Cowell's book At Play in the Tavern: Signs, Coins and Bodies in the Middle Ages may be of interest.
A more entertaining read (if you ask me) is A. Lynn Martin's article "The Role of Drinking in the Male Construction of Unruly Women" in the collection Medieval Sexualities: A Casebook. Apparently men weren't the only ones getting sloshed in medieval drinking establishments... and that worried them. The entire book is available as a .pdf here. (The article starts on page 100.) I'm not sure if it's a legal copy; if it disappears, you can still see most of the article, minus the first two pages, at Google Books.
A tavern also requires drinking songs. Fortunately, the wandering university students of the high Middle Ages have left us many examples. John Addington Symonds translated several of them in his book Wine, Women and Song. Sadly, the tunes to these songs have been lost. However, Arany Zoltan supplies a lively interpretation here.
Finally, drinking establishments can be studied through medieval images. Check out the collection of links assembled by Karen Larsdatter.
Happy holidays everyone, and remember to drink safely!
White wine, from the Tacuinum Sanitatis.