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The Skilled Cavalry Commander¹

in The Shorter Writings

Translation of and Interpretive Essay on Xenophon’s OnThe Skilled Cavalry Commander. This treatise offers excellent practical advice on how to rule as well as a searching investigation of the limits ... More

Translation of and Interpretive Essay on Xenophon’s OnThe Skilled Cavalry Commander. This treatise offers excellent practical advice on how to rule as well as a searching investigation of the limits that constrain even the best rulers, who cannot choose their enemies and cannot always choose their own troops either. So pressing are these limits that Xenophon counsels rulers about how they should seek the help of the gods. This religious education begins by emphasizing the commander’s responsibility to learn, speak, and do everything he can to rule well. If the gods actively help him to do what he should, so much the better.  Taking note of the real or apparent piety of the Commander then provides a useful foundation from which to ponder real or apparent piety of Xenophon’s Socrates.Less

On Horsemanship

in The Shorter Writings

Translation of and Interpretive Essay on Xenophon’s On Horsemanship. Xenophon wrote On Horsemanship because he acquired special expertise during his own lengthy cavalry service. He pairs it with The ... More

Translation of and Interpretive Essay on Xenophon’s On Horsemanship. Xenophon wrote On Horsemanship because he acquired special expertise during his own lengthy cavalry service. He pairs it with The Skilled Cavalry Commander, adding the politics of managing knights to managing horses. This treatise teaches how to buy, house and feed a horse, what the owner should require from the trainer and groom, what maneuvers to teach the horse for battle, and what offensive and defensive equipment to procure. He also teaches horse maneuvers for display, since knights are expected to ride in awe-inspiring civic processions to honor the gods. Xenophon is uniquely explicit in On Horsemanship about one of his favorite writing tactics: apparent but not exact repetition, which places a burden upon the reader to notice the difference.Less

“I Just Got Different Theories” Patti Smith and the New York School of Poetry

Daniel Kane

in "Do You Have a Band?": Poetry and Punk Rock in New York City

This chapter analyzes how, from her time as a young performance poet in New York in the late 1960s to her current position as punk rock’s éminence grise, Patti Smith foregrounded the image of the ... More

This chapter analyzes how, from her time as a young performance poet in New York in the late 1960s to her current position as punk rock’s éminence grise, Patti Smith foregrounded the image of the poet as privileged seer. Simultaneously, Smith rejected stereotypically “feminine” personae emphatically both in terms of the content of her writing and in her very style when performing on stage. Much like Richard Hell’s response to the St. Mark’s scene, Smith developed vatic postures and made gender trouble within the context of her relationship to the Poetry Project. The Poetry Project proved a site in which Smith negotiated friendship literally and metaphorically as a way to establish herself in New York’s downtown scene, from which she launched herself into the world of corporate record labels and rock ‘n’ roll concert arenas. Smith’s friendship with Project-affiliated poets was equal parts target-based ingratiation and strategic distantiation verging at times into overt disrespect. This distantiation, performed fairly consistently in interviews during the early 1970s and re-invoked (if in a much-tempered version) in her memoir Just Kids (2010), successfully kept Smith from becoming fully absorbed into the Poetry Project scene.Less

In the Field of Battle

David Seed, Stephen C. Kenny, and Chris Williams (eds)

in Life and Limb: Perspectives on the American Civil War

The excerpts in this section tend to concentrate on the immediate and longer-term aftermath of particular battles as recorded by combatants and magazine correspondents. They constantly stress the ... More

The excerpts in this section tend to concentrate on the immediate and longer-term aftermath of particular battles as recorded by combatants and magazine correspondents. They constantly stress the sheer number of casualties – horses as well as men – and address the question whether they are even given a decent burial. Here the performance of African American soldiers in combat is also examined.Less

“William Faulkner”

Wright Morris

in The Dixie Limited: Writers on William Faulkner and His Influence

This chapter comments on William Faulkner's use of grotesque humor and comical violence in his fiction. It begins with the novel The Sound and the Fury, in which Faulkner employs the stream of ... More

This chapter comments on William Faulkner's use of grotesque humor and comical violence in his fiction. It begins with the novel The Sound and the Fury, in which Faulkner employs the stream of consciousness as a narrative technique, followed by a discussion of the short story “Spotted Horses” and its “exuberant redundancy of words in their extravagant application to capture a bizarre, outrageous hallucination.” It also considers the novel Light in August, in which the character Lena Grove makes her way like a sleepwalker through a gothic crackling of passions, radiant in a cloak of impenetrable sentiment. Here Faulkner's accumulating rage is kept in bounds—within the scope of the rhetoric—by his humor. The chapter also reviews the short stories “Red Leaves” and “A Rose for Emily”.Less

War, Labor, and Gasoline in “Carcassonne”

Michael Zeitlin

in Faulkner and Money

The story's poetic vision of a young man who sees a horse has often been associated with Faulkner's personal privacy, a mysterious and opaque realm that Faulkner criticism has long attempted to ... More

The story's poetic vision of a young man who sees a horse has often been associated with Faulkner's personal privacy, a mysterious and opaque realm that Faulkner criticism has long attempted to penetrate. In this chapter,Michael Zeitlin reads the story's representation of privacy and poetic subjectivity as an "ideological reflex and echo," in Marx's phrase, of material and economic realities dominated by the Standard Oil Company.A young vagrant, a veteran aviator of the Great War, lies in his garret and dreams of "a buckskin pony with eyes like blue electricity and a mane like tangled fire, galloping up the hill and right off into the high heaven of the world."The Pegasus pony, the knight-aviator, the dream of soaring free from earth toward apotheosis-these motifs from Faulkner circa 1918-1927 all promise a transcendence that never fully arrives, ultimately yielding to the exigencies of the mundane, the immanent, the economic:earthbound labor, earthbound energy, earthbound modernity.Less

“Skilful Jockies” and “Good Sadlers”: Native Americans and Horses in the Southeastern Borderlands

Tyler Boulware

in Borderland Narratives: Negotiation and Accommodation in North America's Contested Spaces, 1500-1850

This chapter introduces and assesses the roles horses played in the economies and societies of eighteenth-century southeastern Indians. Villagers throughout the region found horses essential in ... More

This chapter introduces and assesses the roles horses played in the economies and societies of eighteenth-century southeastern Indians. Villagers throughout the region found horses essential in hunting, trade, and war. If the future of borderlands history centers partly on issues of spatial mobility and ambiguities of power, then horses are especially relevant to borderlands scholarship. In the early South, horses facilitated cross-cultural and economic exchanges while undermining the structures of authority for both Indians and whites. A closer look at the interrelationship between Indians, horses, and the environment affords new insights into borderlands history by underscoring how human and animal mobility not only complicated territorial boundaries and cross-cultural interactions but also subtly modified the socioeconomic foundations and ecological landscape of southeastern Indians.Less

Dog Days to Horse Days: The Introduction of the Horse and Its Impact on Human-Dog Relationships among the Blackfoot

Brandi Bethke

in Dogs: Archaeology beyond Domestication

Dogs played an important role in the social, cultural, and economic life of peoples inhabiting the Northwestern Plains of North America for thousands of years. Despite functioning as pack animals, ... More

Dogs played an important role in the social, cultural, and economic life of peoples inhabiting the Northwestern Plains of North America for thousands of years. Despite functioning as pack animals, guards, religious figures, and even companions, dogs were never as integral to Blackfoot culture as the horse became. To date, researchers have most often characterized the relationship of Blackfoot people and their horses by framing the horse as an “upgraded model”—a “new and improved” dog. While prior experience with domesticated dogs did help facilitate the incorporation of horses into the daily lives of the Blackfoot people, this chapter argues that it is the fundamental differences between dogs and horses that prove to be one of the greatest sources of cultural change between the pre- and postcontact periods. Through a framework that integrates archaeology, history, and contemporary ethnography this chapter identifies these key differences in order to better understand how the horse fostered new and dramatically different conceptions of domesticated animals that in turn had significant effects on the use and value of dogs within equestrian Blackfoot culture.Less

The Decline of the Cavalry: The War Child

Larry J. Daniel

in Conquered: Why the Army of Tennessee Failed

In January, Bragg promoted 26-year-old Joseph Wheeler to major general. He was nicknamed “Fightin’ Joe” for his time spent battling Native Americans in New Mexico. Other nicknames such as “Little ... More

In January, Bragg promoted 26-year-old Joseph Wheeler to major general. He was nicknamed “Fightin’ Joe” for his time spent battling Native Americans in New Mexico. Other nicknames such as “Little Brigadier” and ‘War Child” alluded to his short stature. Wheeler’s attempt to raid Union shipping lines was thwarted when the Union simply ceased all shipping. He later unsuccessfully attacked Union forces at Fort Donnellson. Wheeler’s cavalry suffered sustained breakdowns in discipline and leadership. In general, there was considerable animosity among the leaders of the cavalry. Officers Morgan and Wharton disliked Wheeler, Officer Van Dorn did not trust Officer Forrest, and Forrest allegedly did not like anyone. Morgan and his division were moved to Tennessee after they both proved inadequate. The author notes that the Army of Tennessee had too much cavalry considering the inefficiency of the men who fought mounted and the costs of sustaining the horses.Less