The Horse As Cultural Icon

In modern Western society horses appear as unexpected visitors: not quite exotic, but not familiar either. This estrangement between humans and horses is a recent one since, until the 1930s, horses were fully present in the everyday world. Indeed, as well as performing utilitarian functions, horses possessed iconic appeal. But, despite the importance of horses, scholars have paid little attention to their lives, roles and meanings. This volume helps to redress the balance. It considers the value that the influential elite placed on horses as essential accompaniments to their way of life and as status symbols, as well as the role that horses played in society as a whole and the people who used and cared for them. Contributors include Greg Bankoff, Pia F. Cuneo, Louise Hill Curth, Amanda Eisemann, Jennifer Flaherty, Ian F. MacInnes, Richard Nash, Gavin Robinson, Elizabeth Anne Socolow, Sandra Swart, Elizabeth M. Tobey, Andrea Tonni, and Elaine Walker.

In spite of the importance of horses to Western society until comparatively recent times, scholars have paid very little attention to them. This volume helps to redress the balance, emphasizing their iconic appeal as well as their utilitarian functions.

A surprising, lively, and erudite history of horse and man, for readers of The Invention of Nature and The Soul of an Octopus. Horses and humans share an ancient, profoundly complex relationship. Once our most indispensable companions, horses were for millennia essential in helping build our cities, farms, and industries. But during the twentieth century, in an increasingly mechanized society, they began to disappear from human history. In this esoteric and rich tribute, award-winning historian Ulrich Raulff chronicles the dramatic story of this most spectacular creature, thoroughly examining how they’ve been muses and brothers in arms, neglected and sacrificed in war yet memorialized in paintings, sculpture, and novels—and ultimately marginalized on racetracks and in pony clubs. Elegiac and absorbing, Farewell to the Horse paints a stunning panorama of a world shaped by hooves, and the imprint left on humankind. “A beautiful and thoughtful exploration. . . . Farewell to the Horse is a grown-up, but also lyrical and creative, history book, and I very much enjoyed it.”— James Rebanks, author of the New York Times bestseller The Shepherd’s Life

The discussion addresses the task of theater images in a cultural field where the real is mistaken for its reflection, originality constantly played against seriality, at a moment when simulacra, clones, and emulations of selves and texts become firmly established as the norm. The accommodation of pop icons on stage and the results this framing yields constitute this work's primary interests and aims."--Jacket.

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.

The aristocratic Cavendishes were major figures in the key political and cultural events of seventeenth century England. Because of the intersection of domestic issues with related European ones, their lives are equally bound up with continental European courts and cultures.

Through a study of horses, the book reveals how an important and growing aristocratic estate was managed, where the aristocrat at the centre of it - William Cavendish - travelled and how he spent his time, and how horses were oneof the means by which he asserted his social status.

As much as dogs, cats, or any domestic animal, horses exemplify the vast range of human-animal interactions. Horses have long been deployed to help with a variety of human activities—from racing and riding to police work, farming, warfare, and therapy—and have figured heavily in the history of natural sciences, social sciences, and the humanities. Most accounts of the equine-human relationship, however, fail to address the last few centuries of Western history, focusing instead on pre-1700 interactions. Equestrian Cultures fills in the gap, telling the story of how prominently horses continue to figure in our lives, up to the present day. ​ Kristen Guest and Monica Mattfeld place the modern period front and center in this collection, illuminating the largely untold story of how the horse has responded to the accelerated pace of modernity. The book’s contributors explore equine cultures across the globe, drawing from numerous interdisciplinary sources to show how horses have unexpectedly influenced such distinctively modern fields as photography, anthropology, and feminist theory. Equestrian Cultures boldly steps forward to redefine our view of the most recent developments in our long history of equine partnership and sets the course for future examinations of this still-strong bond.