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peers, they described their values and norms in a way calculated to appeal to the values of the authorities—values more often shared than at odds. Even more intriguing than the effect that these stories had on the authorities to whom they were addressed is the effect they have on those of us who are trying to interpret them hundreds of years later. The use of detail by Michel Foucault and Norbert Elias in describing the horrors of judicial torture and the vulgarity of early books of manners is designed to do more than provide historical accuracy. By forcing us to picture early modern life in graphic detail, they re-create our distance from that world on the level of emotion as well as description. And yet there is much in the way of human nature that we share with our early modern predecessors. While Darnton has made use of our distance from earlier sources to find an opening into what we may not understand of their world, I suggest that we can only access that opening if we approach it with empathy. When we read of a soldier chided by other members of his drinking party into killing a man he described as his “good fellow” or a woman with eight children who pleaded in defense of her husband’s immoderate drinking habits, we begin to relate to our sources on a very human level. In so doing, we are able to make sense of codes of behavior that might otherwise remain impenetrable. Although the documents examined here tell the story of only one city, the drinking customs described were, to use the words of an Augsburg tavern keeper justifying a drinking ritual in , “customary in all German lands.”54 Findings at the local level are thus placed in the broader context provided by the many books, pamphlets, sermons, ordinances, broadsheets, and other printed sources that addressed the drinking problem throughout the Germanspeaking areas of early modern Europe. In terms of the social makeup of its population and the process of communication between authority and populace , Augsburg did not differ significantly from other German towns, and thus it should be seen as representative of urban life more generally. At the same time, however, the tensions created by Augsburg’s bi-confessional character may well have led the local authorities there to take a particularly cautious approach to potential disturbances, especially those of a confessional nature. In respect to issues of institutional authority and specific legal decisions , then, this remains a case study. This study begins with two chapters introducing the city of Augsburg, examining its taverns and drinking rooms as institutions and underlining the importance of taverns and tavern keepers to urban society. Chapters , , 15 Introduction Tlusty FINAL 00b (1-16) Intro 6/5/01 9:09 PM Page 15 and  locate the cultural construct implied by the term “drunkenness” in the early modern German mentality, beginning with an examination of drunkenness as a physical and spiritual state. This requires an excursion into the more theoretical realms explored by doctors, theologians, artists, and poets. The examination of legal practice that follows returns to the documents to evaluate local Augsburg practice as a case study in the treatment of drunken defendants. In Chapters  through , the doors of the public house are opened to reveal the cultural uses of alcohol in early modern society. The ritual of the contract drink is first explored both in theory and as local practice in order to emphasize the cultural value that early modern Germans placed on a shared drink. This is followed by a discussion of the role of drinking in defining household, family, and gender relations and the importance of drinking bouts and rituals to social and cultural identity. Finally, chapters  and  examine the role of the tavern in supporting the aims of the authorities , the variations that existed between norms of control and norms of practice, and the process of negotiation that took place between authority and populace in establishing and enforcing norms of drinking behavior. The tavern in early modern society was a public theater, in which its patrons performed rituals of social and cultural identification. Elites and commoners , men and women, and respectable and less than respectable elements all had a stage there. Upon that stage they acted out their particular part in the social play. When we look through the right windows, we find neither a society of beggars and thieves nor a society of disorder. What we see...

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