The horse as cultural icon : the real and symbolic horse in the early modern world / edited by Peter Edwards, Karl A.E. Enenkel and Elspeth Graham.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

The Duke of Newcastle's 'Love (...) for good horses' : an exploration of meanings / Elspeth Graham -- Visual aids : equestrian iconography and the training of horse, rider and reader / Pia F. Cuneo -- Big men, small horses : ridership, social standing and environmental adaptation in the early modern Philippines / Greg Bankoff -- Letting loose the horses : Sir Philip Sidney's exordium to The defence of poesie / Elizabeth Anne Socolow -- The legacy of Federico Grisone / Elizabeth M. Tobey -- Altering a race of jades : horse breeding and geohumoralism in Shakespeare / Ian F. MacInnes -- 'Beware a bastard breed' : notes towards a revisionist history of the thoroughbred racehorse / Richard Nash -- 'The most excellent of animal creatures' : health care for horses in early modern England / Louise Hill Curth -- 'Dark horses' : the horse in Africa in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries / Sandra Swart -- The Renaissance studs of the Gonzagas of Mantua / Andrea Tonni -- Image and reality : upper class perceptions of the horse in early modern England / Peter Edwards -- 'Know us by our horses' : equine imagery in Shakespeare's Henriad / Jennifer Flaherty -- 'The author of their skill' : human and equine understanding in the Duke of Newcastle's 'New method' / Elaine Walker -- The military value of horses and the social value of the horse in early modern England / Gavin Robinson -- Forging iron and masculinity : farrier trade identities in early modern Germany / Amanda Eisemann.

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.