Put the
Kettle on: Tea and other Hot Drinks in British Culture and Literature
Well into the mid-seventeenth
century, everybody in England – men, women and children – drank beer. Beer was
the standard drink because drinking water was not particularly safe, especially
in cities. The transition from beer to hot drinks such as coffee, chocolate
and, above all, tea in the British Isles is a remarkable phenomenon. We shall
trace this development from its beginnings in the seventeenth century.
The rise of hot drinks was
intimately connected with global trade, colonialism, slavery (no hot drinks
without sugar, no sugar without slaves) and the opium trade (Chinese tea was
exchanged for opium produced in British India). New habits such as coffee- and
tea-drinking were taken over from various cultures of the Orient, especially
the Ottoman Empire and China. To drink coffee or tea provided a physical
connection with the Orient. There is an interesting connection between coffee,
journalism and the development of the public sphere as the earliest newspapers
were both written and read in London´s coffee houses. In the eighteenth
century, the tea table became a site of middle-class domestic sociability. The
etiquette of preparing and taking various drinks was intimately tied to
evolving gender roles. Tea still retains a huge significance in the culture of
British everyday life.
This seminar will include some
hands-on experimentation. We will also prepare and taste some of these drinks,
such as seventeenth-century style hot chocolate (you may be surprised by some
of the ingredients listed in old recipes), various types of tea etc.
There will be a Moodle room. A
reader and other material will be made available there. You will receive your
Moodle password via e-mail.
Requirements: Good preparation for each session,
active participation. Also written work according to your particular Studienordnung.
Also, bring a mug.
Just in case your application is
rejected by the LSF system: If you want to do this course because you are
genuinely interested, you will be most welcome, no matter what LSF says. Please
get in touch with claudia.hausmann@uni-due.de who will enrol you manually. The
worst that might happen to you is that you cannot do a Leistungsnachweis if
you lack the formal requirements.