Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations, Figures, Maps and Tables
- Acknowledgements
- Notes on Contributors
- List of Abbreviations
- 1 The Making and Remaking of Early Modern English Social History
- 2 Brokering Fatherhood: Illegitimacy and Paternal Rights and Responsibilities in Early Modern England
- 3 Gender, Sexuality and the Consumption of Musical Culture in Eighteenth-Century London
- 4 Where was Mrs Turner? Governance and Gender in an Eighteenth-Century Village
- 5 Local Arithmetic: Information Cultures in Early Modern England
- 6 Intoxicants and the Early Modern City
- 7 Food, Drink and Social Distinction in Early Modern England
- 8 Written Obligations, Litigation and Neighbourliness, 1580–1680
- 9 Witchcraft and Neighbourliness in Early Modern England
- 10 Deference, Paternalism and Popular Memory in Early Modern England
- 11 Work, Reward and Labour Discipline in Late Seventeenth-Century England
- 12 Living in Poverty in Eighteenth-Century Terling
- 13 From Commonwealth to Public Opulence: The Redefinition of Wealth and Government in Early Modern Britain
- Appendix: Bibliography of the Published Writings of keith Wrightson from 1974 to 2011
- Index
- Tabula Gratulatoria
- STUDIES IN EARLY MODERN CULTURAL, POLITICAL AND SOCIAL HISTORY
7 - Food, Drink and Social Distinction in Early Modern England
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 May 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations, Figures, Maps and Tables
- Acknowledgements
- Notes on Contributors
- List of Abbreviations
- 1 The Making and Remaking of Early Modern English Social History
- 2 Brokering Fatherhood: Illegitimacy and Paternal Rights and Responsibilities in Early Modern England
- 3 Gender, Sexuality and the Consumption of Musical Culture in Eighteenth-Century London
- 4 Where was Mrs Turner? Governance and Gender in an Eighteenth-Century Village
- 5 Local Arithmetic: Information Cultures in Early Modern England
- 6 Intoxicants and the Early Modern City
- 7 Food, Drink and Social Distinction in Early Modern England
- 8 Written Obligations, Litigation and Neighbourliness, 1580–1680
- 9 Witchcraft and Neighbourliness in Early Modern England
- 10 Deference, Paternalism and Popular Memory in Early Modern England
- 11 Work, Reward and Labour Discipline in Late Seventeenth-Century England
- 12 Living in Poverty in Eighteenth-Century Terling
- 13 From Commonwealth to Public Opulence: The Redefinition of Wealth and Government in Early Modern Britain
- Appendix: Bibliography of the Published Writings of keith Wrightson from 1974 to 2011
- Index
- Tabula Gratulatoria
- STUDIES IN EARLY MODERN CULTURAL, POLITICAL AND SOCIAL HISTORY
Summary
In almost all human societies, access to the resources necessary to sustain life is one of the defining expressions of rank. The extent to which individuals and groups are able to satisfy their most basic requirements for food and drink are as sure an indication as any of their place within the hierarchy of wealth and esteem. In many communities, both the quantity and the quality of essential consumption serve not only to express but also to create those fine grains of distinction and difference upon which caste systems or class structures are built.
In early modern England the food and drink that people ingested provided resonant markers in the expression of worth and the articulation of status. This essay seeks to explore some of the social significance invested in these forms of consumption between the late sixteenth and early eighteenth centuries. As Keith Wrightson has demonstrated, however, this was a period in which the constitution of English society and the texture of relations between its inhabitants were evolving and diversifying in important ways. Thanks to Wrightson's work we have a much more vivid sense not only of the manner in which economic distinctions between the ‘poorer sorts’, ‘middle sorts’ and ‘better sorts’ of people were being reconfigured in these generations, but also of the new forms of social identity that this bequeathed. One reflection of contemporary changes in economy and society was the introduction of novel foodstuffs and the revision of established attitudes towards old ones.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Remaking English SocietySocial Relations and Social Change in Early Modern England, pp. 165 - 188Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2013