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.

Autorentext
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.

Inhalt
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 Woodstock; 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