History Main / TheDungAges

* Since it's such a CrapsackWorld already, ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer}}'''s Old World loves to include elements of The Dung Ages. A typical Bretonnian army has both the stereotypical Arthurian knights and the gross, almost-worthless filth-covered peasants they've conscripted.
** The Brettonian dukedom of Mousillon is the logical extreme to this trope. Mousillon is a filthy, rundown region built on a swamp, so most the buildings are rotted and/or abandoned and streets are little more than sewers. The malformed peasants are almost all inbred, mutants, or infected with plague. The graveyards of Mousillon are larger than the city itself, and undead roaming outside the gates is a constant problem.
** Logical Extreme for humans, anyway. The Skaven, which are bi-pedal intelligent rat people with a penchant for highly advanced if unstable technology, are much, much worse still. Since they exist in the hundreds of millions all over the world but live underground, and are back-stabby and cannibalistic ''and'' worship a God of pestilence and decay, their cities are more mold and rot than wood and stone (the capital is literally sinking a little more into a morass of death every year), their soldiers are disease-ridden and wear more filth than cloth (to say nothing of the "peasants") and they even have a magic discipline focused around decay and disease. Where humans usually at least try, Skaven don't even care, nor do they need to.

* There ''are'' places in the world where this is still TruthInTelevision to some extent or another, due to lack of water and sewer infrastructure[[note]]For instance even ''Dubai'', one of the wealthiest places in the world, does not have a modern sewer system. They have flush toilets, but rather than send human waste through a system of underground pipes it's stored in tanks, which then must be emptied into trucks and taken to be processed. With some larger buildings this has to be done daily.[[/note]], and lack of toilets in private homes and public buildings. [[http://worldtoilet.org/ The World Toilet Organization]] (and several others) are trying to change that.

* There ''are'' places in the world where this is still TruthInTelevision to some extent or another, due to lack of water and sewer infrastructure, and lack of toilets in private homes and public buildings. [[http://worldtoilet.org/ The World Toilet Organization]] (and several others) are trying to change that.

* Averted by the Vikings, [[http://www.vikinganswerlady.com/hairstyl.shtml surprisingly]]. In fact, everything seems to indicate that the old Scandinavians were downright ''obsessed'' with proper grooming and personal hygiene when compared to their neighboring cultures. There are several accounts remarking with disgust how they washed their hands, hair, and faces daily, washed before meals, and changed their clothes and bathed at least every Saturday (the Nordic word for Saturday was "laugardagr", which literally means "bathing/cleaning day", and it even still survives in modern Scandinavian as "lørdag/lördag"). Indeed, several somewhat sour English chroniclers noted this apparent 'vanity' (along with generally dressing nicely) as the reason why they were so popular with Englishwomen.

* Another aversion: the Finnish Sauna. Finns have an unbroken lineage of saunas since time immemorial

* Combined with GorgeousPeriodDress in ''Film/FleshAndBlood''.

* Hob Gadling in ''ComicBook/TheSandman'', who is [[ReallySevenHundredYearsOld really 600 years old]] but looks 30, grumpily complains that a Renaissance Fair or SCA event he's dragged to doesn't have enough shit everywhere. But later he complains that the toilets are "bloody disgusting" and gets back a "we strive for realism".

-> ''"I mean, that's the thing about the past that people forget. All the shit. Animal shit. People shit. Cow shit. Horse shit. You waded through the stuff. You should spray 'em all with shit as they come through the gates."''
-->-- '''[[ReallySevenHundredYearsOld Hob Gadling]]''' at a Renaissance Faire, ''ComicBook/TheSandman''

* Played with in Creator/GeorgeMacDonaldFraser's novel ''Literature/ThePyrates''. The opening pages describe an idealized picture of England during TheCavalierYears with buxom wenches and lots of GorgeousPeriodDress but then refer to scholars' conclusion that the actual standard of living and cleanliness of the time made it closer to The Dung Ages. Fraser then dismisses these conclusions in a tongue-in-cheek way as PoliticalCorrectnessGoneMad and announces that he would prefer to write about 17th century England as it should have been.

* A central humorous theme in the French movie series ''Film/LesVisiteurs''. A medieval knight and his squire are sent to the late 20th century by mistake and pretty much everyone notices how smelly they are, Jacquouille (the squire) in particular (and since he ends up in the house of a dentist, the rotten state of his teeth does not go unnoticed). Peasants in the era they come from look like they're taken straight from one of the aforementioned Monty Python movies and Jacquouille's NeatFreak descendant emphasizes the trope even more by his reactions to his ancestor's dirtiness. Even the 18th-century characters of the third movie are disgusted by Jacquouille, despite their era not having the 20th-century hygiene standards.

* VideoGame/APlagueTale has this view of medieval France, just with the dung replaced by rotting corpses and plague rats. Justified as it is set during TheBlackDeath, and it doesn't help that [[spoiler: the BigBad is trying to weaponize the plague]].

* ''Film/BlackKnight'' has this as part of the humor. At first, Creator/MartinLawrence's character Jamal thinks he's in a Medieval theme park. Then he needs to go to the bathroom and discovers, to his horror, that Medieval privies are... not exactly hygienic. Earlier, a bum ([[spoiler:actually the disgraced Sir Knolte]]) offers him some food, which is a nasty-looking critter on a stick. The scene with the royal feast also shows the Medieval table manners (e.g. loud farting, no utensils, letting a dog lick your fingers). After his first attempt at riding a horse, Jamal is comforted by Victoria... and some leeches. Even the idea that Jamal is literate seems incredible to the locals. Strangely, NoEqualOpportunityTimeTravel is averted (except for Jamal getting tired of people calling him "Moor"), but this can be partly explained by him pretending to be a ducal messenger. His odd mannerisms are attributed to him being perceived as a Norman.

%% Image selected per Image Pickin' thread: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=1447691939086290200
%% Please do not replace or remove without starting a new thread.

[[quoteright:350:[[ComicBook/VanNulTotNu https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/the_dung_ages2.jpg]]]]
[[caption-width-right:350:Those were ''really'' shitty times.]]

%% Caption selected per above IP thread. Please do not replace or remove without discussion here: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=1404492079030138900

* Averted in the novel of ''Literature/{{Timeline}}'', by Creator/MichaelCrichton. After a hard day's work, sure, the people are dirty -- but then they go home and bathe. At least within the fortress walls, but that's where as many people as possible live, for the protection. And the introduction pulls no punches in criticizing the foundations of this stereotype.

* James Clavell's novels are explicit on the mutual CultureShock between West and East. ''Literature/{{Shogun}}'' sees the ValuesDissonance between Blackthorne's Dutch sailors and their unwilling hosts in mediaeval Japan. The Westerners consider three baths in a lifetime is a sufficiency and come from cities where it is common to sling ''all'' your waste and refuse into the street. The Japanese have other ideas. Their first action is to have Blackthorne forcibly bathed and his clothing taken away, at arm's length, for incineration. Blackthorne learns to adapt and bring his personal hygiene up to Japanese levels. His crew do not - they end up in the ghetto set aside, and preferably downwind, for the ''Eta'', the Untouchable caste who do all the dirty work. Even the Eta are repulsed by typical Western standards of cleanliness...
* ''Literature/DoomsdayBook'': {{Subverted}}. Kivrin takes a while to adjust to the idea that the Middle Ages are neither: both better and worse than she might have expected. The doctor who immunizes Kivrin offers to ''cauterize her nose'' because they think the stench will be just that overpowering. However, people are described as smelly and more unwashed than [[ArtisticLicenseHistory would be realistic]] at the time. Only after the Plague did the bathing culture fall away.
* ''Literature/HouseholdGods'' by Judith Tarr and Creator/HarryTurtledove highlights how much this was indeed the case in the late Roman Empire. It's mostly because of ignorance or simply inability to do anything else, however. How do you keep the flies or lice away with no screens or shampoo, for instance? Nonetheless, it's really hard on the protagonist, who's a time traveler from the US in the late '90s. They still do bathe frequently, but it doesn't help much since the grime quickly sets in again, bath water is rarely changed, and sick people go too.
* The narrator of ''Literature/{{Perfume}}'' has this to say about 18th century France:
-->''The streets stank of manure, the courtyards of urine, the stairwells stank of moldering wood and rat droppings, the kitchens of spoiled cabbage and mutton fat; the unaired parlors stank of stale dust, the bedrooms of greasy sheets, damp featherbeds, and the pungently sweet aroma of chamber pots. The stench of sulfur rose from the chimneys, the stench of caustic lyes from the tanneries, and from the slaughterhouses came the stench of congealed blood. People stank of sweat and unwashed clothes; from their mouths came the stench of rotting teeth... even the king himself stank, stank like a rank lion, and the queen like an old goat, summer and winter.''
* ''{{Literature/Timeline}}'': {{Subverted}} and mocked. The protagonist walks around, expecting horribly disgusting conditions, but is surprised to learn everyone is reasonably well kept. In the afterward, Crichton notes this was mostly an invention of the Renaissance, during which many scholars romanticized the Classical period above their own era. Personal hygiene declined significantly only once the Black Plague became epidemic (which started around the time the book is set) when the public baths that were common in most Medieval towns and cities became disease vectors. This made frequent bathing a hazard, and it was denounced as sinful. Because of this, the post-Black Death cultural attitude towards bathing went too far in the other direction, with monarchs like Isabella I of Spain boasting of only bathing a few times in their ''entire lives''. A servant insists that Chris is not clean enough after he washes himself, to his surprise, and scrubs him quite thoroughly.
* ''Literature/SchooledInMagic'': Outside of the mage schools, the world is in this, with abusive nobles, brutal serfdom and poor sanitation contrasting the meritocracy and hot running water of Whitehall. To a magician's nose, even the king smells like shit. [[spoiler:In ''Past Tense'', everyone in the past is as bad off as peasants of the modern-day Nameless World.]]
* ''Literature/TheToughGuideToFantasyland'': Cities in Fantasyland will usually have heaps of refuse, along with being near hovels. Though a certain amount of this makes sense, Jones notes it ''never'' seems to break down. It gets to the point of her inferring that Fantasyland [[ArtisticLicenseBiology must lack insects]], which means it's severely messed up. Abusive nobles and very downtrodden peasants who have a miserable time are also common, though usually country-specific. Lands ruled by TheGoodKing can expect to have happier peasants and nicer nobles. Those of the [[AristocratsAreEvil Aristocratic Feudalists]] though... not so much. Obviously, in the land of [[EvilOverlord the Dark Lord]] it's mostly living hell.

* ''Series/MaidMarianAndHerMerryMen''
* The [=BBC=]'s ''Series/RobinHood'' (2006) includes some elements of The Dung Ages.
* The 1997 English mini-series of Sir Creator/WalterScott's ''Literature/{{Ivanhoe}}'' went for this kind of period accuracy in clothing, beards, and decor. On a small TV set, this left all the male characters looking drab, hairy, and nearly identical, while the scenes were so under-lit the parts of it might just as well have been shot in a cave.
* HBO's ''Series/{{Rome}}'' has The Dung Ages for the plebs, and GorgeousPeriodDress for the patricians. Which is pretty close to the way it would really have been. And even the plebs aren't that badly off in terms of cleanliness, at least while in the titular city; Rome had plenty of public bathhouses that were cheap or free for citizens (but not slaves).
* ''Series/HerculesTheLegendaryJourneys'' had Herc's greedy friend Salmoneous invest in a dung-fertilizer business run by brothers who had become ''way'' too desensitized to the substance.
* Tony Robinson's ''Series/WorstJobsInHistory'' confirmed this to be quite literal TruthInTelevision. A key component of the daub in wattle and daub construction was manure.
* This trope is pretty much the premise of the BBC Two miniseries ''Filthy Cities'', which explored 14th century London, 18th century Paris, and 19th century New York.
* Subverted in the ''Series/MysteryScienceTheater3000'' episode "The Magic Sword", where Joel holds a Renaissance fair on the Satellite of Love, and Servo shows up as an indentured serf, making observations of the "real" Dark Ages, taking the fun out of Joel's fair.
* ''The Dark Ages'', a 1990s BritCom by Rob Grant, starring Phil Jupitus.
* Featured in one of the regular sketches in ''Series/FrenchAndSaunders''.
* ''Series/HorribleHistories'' is an extended example; they point out gross things from every area of history, not just the medieval period, including how the Roman baths were only cleaned once a day and how the enlisted men in WWI had to find unusual uses for urine (or, as the advertising voice said, "New! World War 1 Wee-Wee!")

* A program on Creator/TheHistoryChannel called "Going Medieval" devoted a section to disproving this trope. There were soaps (both personal and laundry) that were cheap enough to be made by any peasant. They even had primitive dental care. Naturally, the upper class could afford better stuff and had more time for it but "unwashed masses" the lower classes were not.

* ''Series/MakingHistory2017'' depicts Colonial America this way. When Chris first arrives there, he immediately throws up, as Dan warns him that the past smells like poo.
* On ''Series/GameOfThrones'', Westeros under King Joffrey is this, mainly because Joffrey doesn't give a damn about anyone but...well...Joffrey, and doesn't see to it that his subjects have adequate food or infrastructure.
* On ''Series/AdamRuinsEverything'', Adam explains to Murph and Emily ''where'' all those studies that say [[MyBiologicalClockIsTicking you have to have children before age 35 OR ELSE]] got their data from: French farmers in the 1500s. He lets in several people, all of whom are dirty and tracking in straw. Murph opens up a window because they smell. One of the farm girls comments in French, "No dirt, no plague...this must be {{Heaven}}!" A researcher on the subject (who herself had all her children relatively late in life) follows and explains that this is a problem because the data comes from an era before fertility treatments (such as IVF), antibiotics, modern medicine, etc. Also, it's only census data, so it doesn't explain ''why'' few of those women were having babies after 35. Sure, it could mean that those women were going through menopause or perimenopause sooner than women today do. But it could also reflect that those women were dying early of diseases (such as TheBlackDeath), or [[DeathByChildbirth dying in childbirth]], or that their husbands had gone off to war, or maybe sex after a certain age was considered "unseemly," or many other possible explanations. [[note]] And, in case you're wondering, more ''modern'' data suggests that a woman's fertility declines, not in her mid 30's, but in her mid ''40's''. And the risk of a live birth with a birth defect ''does'' double: from 0.5% to 1%. So you can have babies later in life than you've been led to believe.
[[/note]]
** In an earlier episode, he goes on to explain that up until the late 19th and early 20th centuries, many towns and cities were like this, and many people got sick and died. Even rich people just relieved themselves wherever. It took the construction of sewer systems, and even ''reversing the direction of a river'' to solve this problem.
* A major theme of ''Series/HistoryBites'' is making use of this trope, from the Neolithic Period to the Old West, for BlackComedy.

* The ''Series/BBCHistoricalFarmSeries'' examines this in detail. The hosts note that while hygiene was more difficult and there were a lot of very mucky tasks, people also weren't blithely going around covered in grime and manure and would clean themselves and their clothes as best as they were able given time and resource constraints. On the other hand, they also go into great detail about the various uses that waste was put to on farms, from the reason manure was an essential component of wattle-and-daub, to the near-limitless chemical applications of human urine.
* ''Series/{{Cadfael}}'' generally averts this. Though the dirt roads and lack of running water are prominent, most of the characters are generally in clean clothes and well-groomed. One notable aversion is when the monks travel to Wales--the town of Gwitheryn and its people are much grubbier than Shrewsbury.

* ''TabletopGame/{{Pendragon}}'' is this at the earliest points in its timeline, with the player characters being little better than armoured thugs on horses. As the game's metaplot progresses, it moves towards and finally reaches YeGoodeOldeDays with the player characters as [[KnightInShiningArmor Knights in Shining Armour.]]

* ''VideoGame/DemonsSouls'' and ''VideoGame/DarkSouls'', both being heavily influenced by ''{{Manga/Berserk}}'' are this. It's most obvious in the Vally of Defilement and Blighttown respectively. These areas are nasty, disgusting, plague-ridden towns built over swamps.

* ''VideoGame/OfOrcsAndMen'' loves this, particularly in the lower-class human areas.

* ''VideoGame/Thief2014'' has technology well beyond TheMiddleAges, but it still fits this trope. People make comments like "We still have our lives and most of our teeth!" and there are rats, garbage heaps, and filthy beggars everywhere. Some thugs in Riverside can be overheard discussing a particularly sweet-smelling prostitute who lathers herself in perfume; she apparently has quite a waiting list.

* Mentioned in ''Webcomic/HarkAVagrant'' where some of the costumes in a film depicting medieval times are not completely appropriate for the era, and the director says "Just rub some dirt on them, I guess. No one's gonna care."

[[folder:WebOriginal]]

* Played heavily straight with in ''two'' of the [[PlanetOfHats lands]] of ''{{Website/Neopets}}''; the medieval land of Meridell and the prehistoric land of Tyrannia. One could make a drinking game out of all the dung-related items that come from both.

* In the short-lived cartoon ''WesternAnimation/MadJackThePirate'', Jack and Snuck visited a very poor village who worshipped an animal and rubbed its droppings on their clothing.
* Averted on ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy'' in an early episode showing the Griffins attending a medieval festival featuring EternalSexualFreedom, plenty of good food, and a chorus of monks grunting Gary Glitter's "Rock 'N' Roll Part One." (Peter even sarcastically remarks that the characters at the festival act so hoity-toity that they remind him of the TV show ''Series/{{Frasier}}''.) This from the same series that regularly portrays TheFifties unflatteringly, with iron-toothed racial segregation (even in the North!) and people so grotesquely gluttonous that they [[ExtremeOmnivore literally eat cigarettes]].

[[folder:Anime and Manga]]

* During the brief Post-Crisis 'Team-Up' phase of Action Comics, Franchise/{{Superman}} is sent back in time by the Demon ComicBook/{{Etrigan}} in order to stop a mystic plot that is killing Metropolis in the present. Creator/JohnByrne had recently established Superman's costume as not being invulnerable but mostly protected under a skin-tight force field his power generated. As a result, his walk through a medieval mudscape is no bother to him, and two passing peasants say [[ShoutOut "That one walks as a King." "Why say you this?" "Look! His Robes Are Untouched By Filth."]]

* Played straight and subverted in ''Fanfic/WithStringsAttached''. The quasi-Victorian city of Focan in Ketafa stinks of dung (and factories) so badly that the four gag when they first smell it and have to breathe through their mouths. The people stink too. Also, when they first meet a native (a farmer who smells like a goat), he sniffs them and is amazed that they "smell different." On the other hand, the quasi-medieval city of Ta'akan in Baravada is kept magically clean, and the citizens bathe regularly, to the point where even crumbling old hotels have their bathrooms maintained. And the Baravadans are very critical of how the four smell when they first arrive from Focan.
** Some of the Ketafans who live in Baravada aren't too concerned with personal hygiene, but most of them apparently picked up the habit from the Baravadans.

* ''Fanfic/GospelOfTheLostGods'': King's Landing absolutely ''reeks'' and more than one character has something to say about it. The Wards as a whole loathe the lowered standards of cleanliness than they are used too in the modern day.

[[folder:Film]]

* Ridley Scott arguably invokes this with his grittier, dung-ier take on ''[[Film/RobinHood2010 Robin Hood]]''.
* Creator/RobertBresson's 1974 film ''Film/LancelotDuLac'', in many ways, instigated this trend in film. Most people do not realize that ''Monty Python and the Holy Grail'' is a send-up of Lancelot du Lac, but the grime and hyperviolence (as in the Black Knight scene especially) are directly related to the earlier film.
* ''Film/MontyPythonAndTheHolyGrail'': The TropeCodifier, in which practically everyone runs around bedraggled, shabby and covered in filth, as noted by one character's caustic observation: "He must be a king. He hasn't got shit all over him." In fact, according to backstage reports, the attention of the two Pythons who were directing (Terry Jones and Terry Gilliam) to keeping things "authentic" in this regard [[note]] Terry Jones admits on the commentary track that this was exaggerated in comparison to what history research has indicated, mentioning for instance that skeletons from the time can have surprisingly good teeth due to the lack of sugar consumption.[[/note]] eventually began to take on slightly obsessive tones and really began to piss off the other Pythons (and the other cast and crew members, for that matter), who were having to seriously suffer for their art. This eventually made it a pretty difficult shoot at times and also perhaps provided a reminder of why this trope exists in the first place. This said, however, Gilliam at least was willing to go through what he was putting everyone else through; his two main characters are probably the filthiest main characters in the movie.
** The scene with the "autonomous collective" was supposed to take place on a normal-looking farm. Because they couldn't get access to a real farm on their filming budget, they changed it to a ''mud farm.'' You could say they were [[IncrediblyLamePun dirt poor]].
-->'''Peasant Woman:''' [[LampshadeHanging Dennis, there's some ]] ''[[LampshadeHanging lovely]]'' [[LampshadeHanging filth down here!]]

* Another Python offshoot (see a pattern here?) ''Film/ErikTheViking'' (directed by Terry Jones) is also filthy dirty.
* A central humorous theme in the French movie series ''Film/LesVisiteurs''. A medieval knight and his squire are sent to the late 20th century by mistake and pretty much everyone notices how smelly they are, Jacquouille (the squire) in particular (and since he ends up in the house of a dentist, the rotten state of his teeth does not go unnoticed). Peasants in the era they come from look like they're taken straight from one of the aforementioned Monty Python movies and Jacquouille's NeatFreak descendant emphasizes the trope even more by his reactions to his ancestor's dirtiness. Even the 18th-century characters of the third movie are disgusted by Jacquouille, despite their era not having the 20th-century hygiene standards.

* Mel Gibson's ''Film/{{Braveheart}}''.
* The England depicted in ''Film/BlackDeath'' is a filthy, depressing place to live (and probably die).
* The village landscapes in ''Film/{{Dragonheart}}'' are several shades of brown.
* The Italian movie ''Film/TheIncredibleArmyOfBrancaleone''
* ''Film/BlackKnight'' has this as part of the humor. At first, Creator/MartinLawrence's character Jamal thinks he's in a Medieval theme park. Then he needs to go to the bathroom and discovers, to his horror, that Medieval privies are... not exactly hygienic. Earlier, a bum ([[spoiler:actually the disgraced Sir Knolte]]) offers him some food, which is a nasty-looking critter on a stick. The scene with the royal feast also shows the Medieval table manners (e.g. loud farting, no utensils, letting a dog lick your fingers). After his first attempt at riding a horse, Jamal is comforted by Victoria... and some leeches. Even the idea that Jamal is literate seems incredible to the locals. Strangely, NoEqualOpportunityTimeTravel is averted (except for Jamal getting tired of people calling him "Moor"), but this can be partly explained by him pretending to be a ducal messenger. His odd mannerisms are attributed to him being perceived as a Norman.
* The English countryside, and the towns and villages apart from the castles in ''Film/RobinHood1991''.
* The town of Big Whiskey in ''Film/{{Unforgiven}}'' is covered in so much mud.
* Nineteenth century Paris in ''Film/LesMiserables2012''.
* ''Film/TheThirteenthWarrior'' accurately depicts the Viking method of bathing, as detailed in the Real Life section below.
* ''Film/AMillionWaysToDieInTheWest'' takes elements of this trope, transports them into TheWildWest, and plays the whole thing for laughs.
* The 1989 version of ''Hard to be a God'' is set on an Earthlike planet where the Renaissance never happened, stranding the population in medieval stasis. It is incredibly filthy, including scenes where residents will step into something, scrape it off their foot, then smell it to ascertain what they stepped in.
* ''Film/TheHourOfThePig'': Averted. The characters are shown as largely clean (with some peasants not as much, but that may just be after a hard day's work) and going to a bathhouse. In fact, it may be unrealistic, since by the time the bathing culture had deteriorated after the Plague (bathhouses were a disease vector and often closed).
* ''{{Film/Ironclad}}'': Almost everybody is covered in grime, and things like wooden buildings and carts appear very ramshackle and shoddy.
* In ''Film/{{Sin|2019}}'' (the 2019 Creator/MichelangeloBuonarroti {{biopic}}), people empty the content of their chamber pots in the streets through the windows in both Florence and Carrara. Michelangelo ends up showered twice.

* Played straight in ''Literature/ElConquistador''. Quetza discovers that, although the Europeans are a fearsome threat, they are dirty and smelly as hell. Even his LoveInterest isn't from there, as she is a Japanese maiden.
* Played with in Creator/GeorgeMacDonaldFraser's novel ''Literature/ThePyrates''. The opening pages describe an idealized picture of England during TheCavalierYears with buxom wenches and lots of GorgeousPeriodDress but then refer to scholars' conclusion that the actual standard of living and cleanliness of the time made it closer to The Dung Ages. Fraser then dismisses these conclusions in a tongue-in-cheek way as PoliticalCorrectnessGoneMad and announces that he would prefer to write about 17th century England as it should have been.
* ''Literature/TheWarlordChronicles'' by Bernard Cornwell rips the Myth/KingArthur mythos from the medieval version of GorgeousPeriodDress setting into this one.

* ''Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire'' goes for the duality of GorgeousPeriodDress and The Dung Ages. A lot of the action involves the nobles, but it's made clear that the "smallfolk" are having a pretty shitty time of it, usually paying the price for disputes between lords. The moral aspects of the era are called up, as well -- thirteen is seen as a perfectly valid age for marriage, the most popular system of justice is trial by combat, castration's still a legal punishment... [[CrapsackWorld Westeros is just not a nice place]].
* ''Literature/TheWitcher'', in all its postmodernist glory. Here it goes even to the higher classes, at least in the North, where even kings would need a rather emphatical encouraging to bathe. Sorcerers, on the other hand, are no less clean than the modern people.
* Averted in the novel of ''Literature/{{Timeline}}'', by Creator/MichaelCrichton. After a hard day's work, sure, the people are dirty -- but then they go home and bathe. At least within the fortress walls, but that's where as many people as possible live, for the protection. And the introduction pulls no punches in criticizing the foundations of this stereotype.

* Sometimes averted, sometimes upheld in Creator/EricFlint's ''Literature/SixteenThirtyTwo'' series. The "downtime" Germans of the 17th century are notable in their day and age as having some of the cleanest cities and towns in Europe, but some other places -- Edinburgh, for one -- are every bit as filthy as the stereotype would have it. [[spoiler:Indeed, Julie Sims Mackay's infant daughter contracts a severe infection while passing through Edinburgh from which she almost dies.]]

* In ''Literature/{{Evolution}}'' a hunter-gatherer arriving in a Proto-Indo-European city (about 6000 BC) is understandably appalled by the hygienic conditions following the rapid population growth.

* Averted or subverted in the historical romances of Beatrice Small. While she points out the lack of sewers doesn't exactly contribute to city cleanliness, the main characters in her books do bathe frequently, if not every day.
* Both averted and played straight on Robert Low's ''The Oathsworn Series''. Although the overall world didn't care much for sissy things like basic hygiene, Norse characters are shown to be "more vain than women" with all the combing their hairs and taking regular showers.

* ''Literature/BekaCooper'', set two centuries before the rest of the ''Literature/TortallUniverse'' books, really goes for this. However, it's mostly because Beka lives and works in the poorest part of the city, where good sanitation is warning people in the street that you're about to dump your chamberpot out the window. Expensive districts are markedly cleaner, and Port Caynn has a decent (for medieval times) sewer system.

* Discussed in ''Ghoul'', by Creator/MichaelSlade. A section of background about London notes that sewage used to be thrown in a trench in the middle of the road. Workers known as "rakers" were paid to push the slop around, and one unfortunate fellow drowned in his own shit. The novel also helpfully points out that the expression "going to the loo" came from the cry of "Gardy-loo!" (translated from "gardez-l'eau") as one emptied the chamber pot out the window. The tradition of the man walking on the outside also came from this, as he'd be [[UrineTrouble more likely to be hit by falling excrement]].
* In ''Literature/TheLighthouseDuet'', the land of Navronne has famine, rain, and copious amounts of mud, and Valen sees the relatively simple food offered by the monks at Gillarine as a luxury, which says a lot about what the food is like elsewhere. In this case, it's justified, as Navronne is mired in a protracted civil war that includes a faction of necromancers and a doomsday cult.
* Creator/MaryRenault didn't dwell on this too much in her books on UsefulNotes/AlexanderTheGreat but did bring out his habit of frequent bathing (meaning that a lot of other people followed his example). Bathing was also important in the Persian court as described in the second book of the Alexander trilogy. In the non-fiction book ''The Nature of Alexander'' where she gives all the background information she found, she mentioned that the Persian courts also had lots of incense to cover up "the almost universal human stink". Greek culture in general is, rather famously, a subversion: and Alexander adhered more closely to Greek customs than his Macedonian countrymen. If a Greek couldn't bathe in water, he would cover himself in oil and then scrape it off: bringing any dirt (and usually hair) along with it. Greek men might very well bathe multiple times in a day: obsessive even by today's standards.

* Averted by the Vikings, [[http://www.vikinganswerlady.com/hairstyl.shtml surprisingly]]. There are several accounts remarking with disgust how they washed their hands, hair, and faces daily, washed before meals, and changed their clothes and bathed at least every Saturday (the Nordic word for Saturday was "laugardagr", which literally means "bathing/cleaning day", and it even still survives in modern Scandinavian as "lørdag/lördag"). Indeed, several somewhat sour English chroniclers noted this apparent 'vanity' (along with generally dressing nicely) as the reason why they were so popular with Englishwomen.

* ''Literature/TheWarlordChronicles'' by Bernard Cornwell rips the KingArthur mythos from the medieval version of GorgeousPeriodDress setting into this one.

* ''Literature/HouseholdGods'' by Judith Tarr and Creator/HarryTurtledove highlights how much this was the case in the late Roman Empire. It's mostly because of ignorance or simply inability to do anything else, however. How do you keep the flies or lice away with no screens or shampoo, for instance? Nonetheless, it's hard on the protagonist, who's a time traveler from the US in the late '90s. They still do bathe frequently, but it doesn't help much since the grime quickly sets in again, bath water is rarely changed, and sick people go too.

-->-- '''[[ReallySevenHundredYearsOld Hob Gadling]]''' at Renaissance Faire, ''ComicBook/TheSandman''

A really crappy time to be alive. [[{{Pun}} Literally]].

* Up until the 19th century, the water from the Thames was used both for drinking and sewage. The brutally hot summer of 1858 was known in London as [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Stink "The Great Stink"]], the Thames became so pestilential that the Parliament at Westminster (which is right by the river) shut itself down because the stench from the river was unbearable. In some places, it was said that that feces, dead fish, and industrial sludge piled up six feet deep by the shore. Fortunately, this became the final straw that led to the building of massive sewers and water treatment facilities that rehabilitated the Thames.

* In ''Film/{{Sin|2019}}'' (Creator/MichelangeloBuonarroti {{biopic}}), people empty the content of their chamber pots in the streets through the windows in both Florence and Carrara. Michelangelo ends up showered twice.