Article by Dr. Ann Hubert accepted for publication

Some good news in the English department:  Dr. Ann Hubert’s publication of "Horses and Harries: Medieval Depictions of Virtue and Vice in 1 Henry IV" has been accepted for publication.  Publication details to follow.  Below is the abstract she has written to accompany it.

This article uncovers the competing medieval ideologies of the horse in 1 Henry IV and argues that their implementation interrogates the interconnected construction of masculinity and honor in the play. Depicted variously in medieval romance as the foundation of courtesy and in medieval preaching as unbridled sin, horses signify a complex range of behavioral expectations that provides a new template from which to understand Hal as the impressionable youth who must choose between the path of virtue (the battlefield and Hotspur) and vice (the tavern and Falstaff) to find salvation, which in this case is the approval of his father, King Henry IV. Shakespeare’s integration of the horse’s competing medieval ideologies not only secularizes the psychomachia of the morality play form but also highlights how the presentation of masculinity and honor challenges the seemingly straightforward categorization of Falstaff as vice, Hotspur as virtue, and Hal as a reformed sinner.