Abstract
Adam Thorpe’s novel, Hodd, published in 2009, remedievalizes the Robin Hood legend, bringing it closer in many ways to the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century versions of the legend, where Robin was a cutthroat. However, Hodd’s narrative is also layered with both medievalism and neomedievalism, particularly with regard to alcohol consumption. Through depictions of drunkenness, violence, and bacchanalian excess, alcohol consumption renders the medieval past of the novel a cultural other for the modern audience. Alcohol consumption is presented as harmful both for individuals and for the society, challenging the nostalgia often inherent in medievalism and neomedievalism. Thorpe does not, then, create a historical vision, but instead addresses our modern sensitivities to ale- and wine-drinking. The characters drink mainly ale, and alcohol connotes not only conviviality, but also violence that characterizes some visions of the medieval. Disgust is provoked in the readers so that they respond to the medieval negatively: the degeneration of the titular protagonist, Hodd, is described through the smells of alcohol and excretion. He is presented as a violent Bacchus. Medievalist impressions of class, gender, and religion are also addressed in a diverse range of drinking behaviors, where ale is seen as a drink of the lower classes, drunken women are presented as animalistic and sinful, and monks are drink- and money-obsessed. Thorpe thus uses a form of “reversed pastism” as he constructs this anti-nostalgic and non-ideal past through disgust and horror.
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- 1.
In the chapter I will consistently use the spelling “Hodd” from the title, even though Thorpe himself uses “Hodd,” “Hod,” “Hoode,” and “Hode” interchangeably in order to reflect the Middle English diversity of spellings in one and the same word due to a lack of standardization; at the same time the fictitious narrator argues that the manuscript is consistent, since it “never uses the variant spelling ‘Hood’ or ‘Hoode’”; see Note 3 (Thorpe 2010, 14).
- 2.
Accordingly, Noëlle Phillips uses the words “beer” and “ale” interchangeably, even though the difference between the two consisted in the presence (beer) or absence of hops (ale) in the brewing process (Phillips 2019, 22); Thorpe, however, “medievalizes” the narrative by insisting on the word “ale.”
- 3.
These days beer is classified as a broad category that includes types of ale and types of lager (Oliver 2011, 26).
- 4.
The word “ale” for fermented malt liquor comes from Old English alu or ealu (Cornell 2004, 289), while in the sixth or seventh century the word bior started to be used, which probably came from the Latin biber (Cornell 2004, 291); in England the two meant something different from the start (Cornell 2004, 293).
- 5.
Among others, Louise D’Arcens discusses nostalgia over the medieval past (D’Arcens 2014, 185–186).
- 6.
In this volume Richard Fahey’s essay “The Wonders of Ebrietas: Drinking in Anglo-Saxon Riddles” refers to the festive celebration of alcohol consumption.
- 7.
For a discussion of Tadeusz Kraszewski’s Polish novel about Robin Hood, see my essay (Czarnowus 2019, 167–183).
- 8.
There exist studies that discuss specific Greenwood characters as they are represented on film; see, for example, Sherron Lux’s essay (Lux 2000, 151–160).
- 9.
The various directions for analyzing the Robin Hood legend have been indicated by Stephen Knight (Knight 2000,111–128).
- 10.
For commentary on the type of merry-making that includes ale and beer, see Phillips (2019, 34).
- 11.
In their definition, MEMO notes that “neomedievalism” “[i]nvolves contemporary ‘medieval’ narratives that purport to merge (or even replace) reality as much as possible. There is no longer a sense of the futile and [it] is thus more playful and in greater denial of reality. [...] Already fragmented histories are purposed as further fragmented, destroyed and rebuilt to suit whimsical fancy” (Robinson 2015; qtd. in Matthews 2015, 39).
- 12.
See Note 371 (Thorpe 2010, 263).
- 13.
The palimpsest structure is reminiscent of Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose, which pretends to be Father Vallet’s nineteenth-century French translation of the fourteenth-century Adso of Melk’s Latin manuscript and there are specific bibliographic data provided for the translation (Eco 2004).
- 14.
See Adam Thorpe’s e-mail of November 8, 2009, quoted in Sikorska’s essay (Sikorska 2010, 111).
- 15.
For a discussion of the sin of gluttony see Susan E. Hill’s article (Hill 2007, 57–72).
- 16.
- 17.
However, already Version B of Langland’s Piers the Plowman includes the figure of “Robyn the ropere,” who participates in the Confession of Sins partly devoted to Gluttony, and drinking in excess is discussed here; see Passus V: 329 (Langland 2006, 80).
- 18.
- 19.
Phillips adds that already in the early medieval period in England “wine … was a luxury that many could not afford” (2019, 27).
- 20.
In the ‘“Introduction” to this volume Rosemary O’Neill, Noëlle Phillips, and John A. Geck analyze Skelton’s poem in more detail.
- 21.
For more on misogynist images of women that are related to their producing and drinking alcohol in this volume see Carissa M. Harris’s “From Tapsters to Beer Wenches: Women, Alcohol, and Misogyny Then and Now” and Rosemary O’Neill’s “Devil’s Brew: Demons, Alewives, and the Gender of Beer, in the Chester Harrowing of Hell and Contemporary Craft Beer Branding.”
- 22.
For the association between ale drinking and social class, illustrated by the low origin of the participants of the Peasants Revolt, led by Wat Tyler and John Ball, see Gower’s “Vox Clamantis” (Gower 1902, 40–45).
- 23.
All the quotations from The Canterbury Tales will refer to this edition.
- 24.
For a discussion of various medieval and early modern outlaws in Britain and the legends attached to them see, for example, Kaufman’s edited volume (Kaufman 2011).
- 25.
See, for example, Daniel T. Kline’s essay (Kline 1995).
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Czarnowus, A. (2022). “Harsh, Violent, and Muddy,” or Ale, Wine, and Liquor in Adam Thorpe’s Hodd. In: Geck, J.A., O’Neill, R., Phillips, N. (eds) Beer and Brewing in Medieval Culture and Contemporary Medievalism. The New Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94620-3_14
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