ABSTRACT
Following philosophical and artistic traditions stretching back to classical antiquity, early modern representation of the horse's obedient submission is understood both to communicate and to prove the genuine authority of his rider. The horse functions as a cultural symbol for virtuous human mastery over a number of dangerously capricious phenomena, including emotions, political states, and nature itself. Viewing early modern equestrian imagery through an animal studies lens changes the kinds of questions. The author uses these texts as suggestive sources that provide an insight into horses' lives in the early modern period. At the bases of these texts lie observations about contemporaneous horse-human interactions that reveal close attention to the equine side of the equation. The archaeological investigations discussed strongly suggest that the animal autobiographies considered here are more than mere works of fiction and appear to be firmly grounded in the brutal realities manifest in zoo-archeological evidence.
