The Culture of the Horse: Status, Discipline, and Identity in the Early Modern World

by K. Raber, T. Tucker

Overview

This volume fills an important gap in the analysis of early modern history and culture by reintroducing scholars to the significance of the horse. A more complete understanding of the role of horses and horsemanship is absolutely crucial to our understanding of the early modern world. Each essay in the collection provides a snapshot of how horse culture and the broader culture - that tapestry of images, objects, structures, sounds, gestures, texts, and ideas - articulate. Without knowledge of how the horse figured in all these aspects, no version of political, material, or intellectual culture in the period can be entirely accurate.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781403966216
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan US
Publication date:	03/04/2005
Series:	Early Modern Cultural Studies 1500-1700
Edition description:	2005
Pages:	371
Product dimensions:	5.51(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.04(d)

About the Author

KAREN RABER is Associate Professor of English at the University of Mississippi, USA. She is author of Dramatic Difference: Gender, Class and Genre in the Early Modern Closet Drama (Delaware 2002), and co-editor with Ivo Kamps of Measure for Measure: Texts and Contexts (Bedfor/St. Martin's 2004).

TREVA J. TUCKER is a doctoral candidate in History at the University of Southern California, USA. Her article, Eminence over Efficacy: Social Status and Cavalry Service in Sixteenth-Century France appeared in the Sixteenth Century Journal in 2001.

Table of Contents

Introduction PART I: POWER AND STATUS Cultural Convergence: The Equine Connection between Muscovy and Europe; A.Kleimola The Palio Horse in Renaissance and Early Modern Italy; E.Tobey Shakespeare and the Social Devaluation of the Horse; B.Boehrer "Faith, Say a Man Should Steal Ye-And Feed Ye Fatter": Equine Hunger and Theft in Woodsk; K.de Ornellas PART II: DISCIPLINE AND CONTROL Just a Bit of Control: The Historical Significance of Sixteenth- and Seventeenth- Century German Bit Books; P.Cuneo Man and Horse in Harmony; E.Le Guin From Gens d'armes to Gentilshommes: Dressage, Civilité, and Ballet à Cheval; K.van Orden PART III: IDENTITY AND SELF-DEFINITION A Horse of a Different Color: Nation and Race in Early Modern Horsemanship Treatises; K.Raber Honest English Breed:" The Thoroughbred as Cultural Metaphor; R.Nash Early Modern French Noble Identity and the Equestrian "Airs Above the Ground"; T.J.Tucker "Horses! Give me More Horses!": White Settler Identity, Horses and the Making of Early Modern South Africa, 1655-1700; S.Swart Learning to Ride in Early Modern Britain, or, The Making of the English Hunting Seat; D.Landry

Editorial Reviews

"In premodern societies, the horse is everywhere--in the economy, in warfare, in politics, and in the most diverse activities--just as the automobile is in other societies. Necessity, power, pleasure: all make the horse a useful and effective tool, as well as a distinctive social sign and symbol. A permanent fact in the Western world, this specific relationship between humans and horses is embodied in the prestige of the Society of riding masters whose Art influences other civilizations. Horses thus construct status, teach lessons of discipline and control, and shape identities, both individual and collective. This is the principal contribution of the collection of essays assembled by Karen Raber and Treva J. Tucker. It is a magnificent proof of the vitality of early modern cultural history in the United States."--Daniel Roche, Collège de France

From the Publisher