Bridling at Halters: Equine Bodies and Double Binds in John Gower’s “Tale of Rosiphelee”

ABSTRACT

The generative but limited scholarship on animals in John Gower’s work does not, as yet, address how daily contact with animals in the Middle Ages affects their representations in literature. Recognizing the domesticated animal’s need for daily care pressures the narrative import of a didactic tale such Gower’s “Tale of Rosiphelee,” qualifying its advocacy of women’s submission to love and marriage. This article looks specifically at horses, placing late medieval hippiatric manuals in English next to representations of horses in Gower’s Confessio Amantis, particularly his “Rosiphelee.” Hippiatric manuals illuminate how horses’ physical proximity to humans in medieval daily life can unsettle the horses’ metaphorical roles; as equine bodies need care, their fleshly presence and the nurture essential to them vexes how they signify. In “Rosiphelee,” Gower’s representation of the suffering equine body evokes cultural ambivalence about the capacity of social institutions to protect and care for women.