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By Root 3180 0

the written and unwritten literature and the social activities and pursuits that are fundamental to the lives of most people. The distinguishing characteristic of popular culture is its collective and public nature. Group activity was especially evident in the festival, a broad name used to cover a variety of celebrations: community festivals in Catholic Europe that celebrated the feast day of the local patron saint; annual festivals, such as Christmas and Easter, that went back to medieval Christianity; and Carnival, the most spectacular form of festival, which was celebrated in Spain, Italy, France, Germany, and Austria. All of these festivals were special occasions when people ate, drank, and celebrated to excess. In traditional societies, festival was a time for relaxation and enjoyment because much of the rest of the year was a time of unrelieved work. As the poet Thomas Gray said of Carnival in Turin in 1739: “This Carnival lasts only from Christmas to Lent; one half of the remaining part of the year is passed in remembering the last, the other in expecting the future Carnival.”14

CARNIVAL Carnival was celebrated in the weeks leading up to the beginning of Lent, the forty-day period of fasting and purification preceding Easter. Carnival was, understandably, a time of great indulgence, just the reverse of Lent, when people were expected to abstain from meat, sex, and most recreations. Hearty consumption of food, especially meat and other delicacies, and heavy drinking were the norm during Carnival; so was intense sexual activity. Songs with double meanings that would be considered offensive at other times could be sung publicly at this time of year. A float of Florentine “key-makers,” for example, sang this ditty to the ladies: “Our tools are fine, new and useful; We always carry them with us; They are good for anything; If you want to touch them, you can.”15

Finally, Carnival was a time of aggression, a time to release pent-up feelings. Most often this took the form of verbal aggression, since people were allowed to openly insult other people and even criticize their social superiors and authorities. Certain acts of physical violence were also permitted. People pelted each other with apples, eggs, flour, and pig’s bladders filled with water.

TAVERNS AND ALCOHOL The same sense of community evident in festival was also present in the chief gathering places of the common people, the local taverns or cabarets. Taverns functioned as regular gathering places for neighborhood men to talk, play games, conduct small business matters, and drink. In some countries, the favorite drinks of poor people, such as gin in England and vodka in Russia, proved devastating as poor people regularly drank themselves into oblivion. Gin was cheap; the classic sign in English taverns, “Drunk for a penny, dead drunk for two pence,” was literally true. In England, the consumption of gin rose from 2 million to 5 million gallons between 1714 and 1733 and declined only when complaints finally led to laws restricting sales in the 1750s. Of course, the rich drank too. Samuel Johnson once remarked, “All the decent people in Lichfield got drunk every night and were not the worse thought of.” But unlike the poor, the rich drank port and brandy, usually in large quantities.

Popular Culture: Carnival. Pictured here in a painting by Giovanni Signorini is a scene from the celebration of Carnival on the Piazza Santa Croce in Florence, Italy. Carnival was a period of festivities before Lent, celebrated in most Roman Catholic countries. Carnival became an occasion for indulgence in food, drink, games, practical jokes, and merriment, all of which are evident here.

Museo di Firenze com’era, Florence//© Scala/Art Resource, NY

This difference in drinking habits between rich and poor reminds us of the ever-widening separation between the elite and the poor in the eighteenth century. In 1500, popular culture was for everyone; a second culture for the elite, it was the only culture for the rest of society. But between 1500 and 1800, the nobility, clergy,