"... so that I wished myself to be a horse":
The Horse as Representative for Cultural Change in Systems of Thought
International Conference at the University of Vechta
(13 – 16 November 2013)
Since the dawning of western culture, mankind has shared a deep relationship
with horses. With their antique myths of Pegasus and centaurs, their role as
means of labor, transport, and transportation as well being obedient servants in
times of war and partners in modern sports, they have proven themselves to be a
central part in the life of man in many ways.
This conference does not aim, however, to retrace the history of the motif of the
horse which has been done many times before; rather, it seeks to establish a
larger intellectual context.
From antiquity onward, man and horse have been portrayed as representatives of
passion and drive, on the one hand, and as reason, on the other. The so-called
Arbor Porphyriana (named after Porphyry (232-305)) considers man as the
climax of creation because he is gifted with ratio. Porphyry used various
animals like horses, dogs, and sheep; yet the well-known representation of the
Early Modern period, i.e. the woodcarving by Carolus Bovillus from 1510,
concentrated on the level below (sentient and pensive) man which is the
(sentient) horse. In the Early Modern period, dramas and poems by Shakespeare
and his contemporaries provided for numerous references to the relationship
between man and horse. At the end of the 17th century, John Locke states in his
Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689) the rational superiority of
mankind: "reason stands for a Faculty in Man, […] that Faculty, whereby Man is
supposed to be distinguished from Beasts, and wherein it is evident he much
surpasses them." During the 18th century, this attribution of rationality and
instinct is radically questioned and defined anew when Gulliver meets the
Yahoos and Houyhnhnms. The 19th century uses the horse as a symbol of poetic
creativity when in Don Juan Lord Byron allows the Icarian man of the Romantic
period to strive on the wings of Pegasus to infinity. In hardly any other picture
than that of the falling Pegasus do the images of creative genius and utter failure
unfold more. In the middle of the 19th century, Charles Darwin transcended the
existing hierarchy in his work The Origin of Species (1859) by arguing that
man’s intellect and body descended directly from animals thereby finally closing
the gap between the notion of the rational (?) man and the irrational (?) horse
that had existed up until then.
The conference will take place at the University of Vechta, a picturesque town
in one of Germany's most famous horse breeding areas. It seeks to cover various
aspects of the portrayal of horses as representatives of cultural change and will
be organised by Prof. Dr. Norbert Lennartz (University of Vechta) and Prof. Dr.
Sonja Fielitz (University of Marburg).
Topics may include:
The blending of man and horse into one entity (Centaur).
Equestrian sport as expression of carnival as defined by Bakhtin.
The horse as expression of social status (ballet à cheval).
Picaresque (anti-) heroes and their horses.
Nightmare figures since the Romantic period.
The horse as an instrument of fate.
We invite contributions from philological departments, philosophy, art and
(veterinary) medical history. The languages of the conference are both German
and English.
Please send proposals by 10 January 2013 to
Prof. Dr. Norbert Lennartz
Universität Vechta
Institut für Geistes- und Kulturwissenschaften
Anglistik
Driverstraße 22
D-49377 Vechta
Tel.: 04441 – 15414
E-mail: norbert.lennartz@uni-vechta .de
and
Prof. Dr. Sonja Fielitz
Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik
Philipps-Universität Marburg
Wilhelm-Röpke-Str. 6D
D-35037 Marburg
Tel: 06421 2824760
E-mail: fielitz@staff.uni-marburg.de