Investigations of a Dog

The Horse as Cultural Icon: The Real and the Symbolic Horse in the Early Modern World is a new collection of essays about early-modern horses edited by Peter Edwards, Karl Enenkel and Elspeth Graham, and published by Brill. It should be out next week and it’s already available for preorder on Amazon US (if you’ve got loads of money) but I can’t find it on Amazon UK yet.

I’ve got a chapter in it about the military and social value of horses, mostly in early-modern England but it also touches on the middle ages and the First World War. It’s basically exploring Bruce Boehrer’s idea that horses were socially devalued in early-modern England. It includes an alternative narrative of cavalry warfare, a discussion of how horse ownership and cavalry service were (or weren’t) related to elite social status, and a look at the cultural myths of cavalry and chivalry in literature.

The full contents are:

1. Greg Bankoff, ‘Big Men, Small Horses: Ridership, Social Standing and Environmental Adaptation in the Early Modern Philippines’, pp. 99-120.
2. Pia F. Cuneo, ‘Visual Aids: Equestrian Iconography and the Training of Horse, Rider and Reader’, pp. 71-97.
3. Louise Hill Curth, ‘‘The Most Excellent of Animal Creatures’: Health Care for Horses in Early Modern England’, in pp. 217-40.
4. Peter Edwards, ‘Image and Reality: Upper Class Perceptions of the Horse in Early Modern England’, pp. 281-306.
5. Amanda Eisemann, ‘Forging Iron and Masculinity: Farrier Trade Identities in Early Modern Germany’, pp. 377-402.
6. Jennifer Flaherty, ‘‘Know Us by Our Horses’: Equine Imagery in Shakespeare’s Henriad’, pp. 307-25.
7. Elspeth Graham, ‘The Duke of Newcastle’s ‘Love For Good Horses’: An Exploration of Meanings’, pp. 37-69.
8. Ian F. MacInnes, ‘Altering a Race of Jades: Horse Breeding and Geohumoralism in Shakespeare’, pp. 175-89.
9. Richard Nash, ‘‘Beware a Bastard Breed’: Notes Towards a Revisionist History of the Thorough bred Racehorse’, pp. 191-216.
10. Gavin Robinson, ‘The Military Value of Horses and the Social Value of the Horse in Early Modern England’, pp. 351-76.
11. Elizabeth Anne Socolow, ‘Letting Loose the Horses: Sir Philip Sidney’s Exordium to The Defence of Poesie’, pp. 121-42.
12. Sandra Swart, ‘‘Dark Horses’: The Horse in Africa in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’, pp. 241-60.
13. Elizabeth M. Tobey, ‘The Legacy of Federico Grisone’, pp. 143-71.
14. Andrea Tonni, ‘The Renaissance Studs of the Gonzagas of Mantua’, pp. 261-78.
15. Elaine Walker, ‘‘The Author of their Skill’: Human and Equine Understanding in the Duke of Newcastle’s ‘New Method’’, pp. 327-50.