Practical Horsemanship in Medieval Arthurian Romance

The mediaeval knight is a mythic figure, always (like the cowboy) imagined primarily on horseback. Horses used to play a part in many human activities, but twenty-first-century readers have been cut off from all that by the triumph of the internal combustion engine. Anastasija Ropa, however, knows both about horses and about the historic and imaginative worlds in they were once ubiquitous. Observant readers today may notice that when that very modern figure, Chrétien de Troyes's obsessed and controlling Orguilleux de la Lande, forces his mistress to ride a horse that he will not allow to be reshod, that is cruel to the horse, but how many, without Dr Ropa's guidance, will realize that the lady's ride will become inexorably more uncomfortable until it is a painful and inescapably public humiliation? Similarly, modern readers will notice the contrast in the Ellesmere Chaucer miniatures between the Prioress's high-stepping mount and the Second Nun's wretched balky nag; but who, without Dr Ropa's prompting, will realize that the Prioress's style of riding is not as competent as such a good horse needs, or that the Second Nun's horse is unshod? These things extend Chaucer's satire, suggesting that the Top People whom the Prioress wants to impress would find her horsemanship, like her famously provincial French, slightly comic; and that the way she exercises the authority she has been given over her sisters in Christ is, albeit unconsciously, comparable to the behaviour of Orguilleux de la Lande."" - Peter Field, Professor Emeritus of Bangor University, UK