Interpreting Nightingales: Gender, Class and HistoriesA&C Black, 1997 M07 1 - 299 pages The poetic nightingale is so familiar it seems hardly to merit serious attention. Yet its ubiquity is significant, suggesting associations with erotic love, pathos and art that cross culture and history. This book examines the different nightingales of European literature, starting with the Greek myth of Philomela, the raped girl, silenced by having her tongue cut out, and then transformed into the bird whose name means poet, poetry and nightingale simultaneously. Moving from the classical to the Christian worlds, Jeni Williams discusses nightingales and nature in the early church and sees the emergence of the figure as an emotive emblem of the aristocracy in mediaeval vernacular debate poetry. Her final chapters use the nightingale and the myth to examine Elizabeth Barrett Browning's struggle for an active female voice in Victorian poetry. |
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Page 5
... English Nightingales 75 CHAPTER 4 Fragmentation and Alienation : Victorian Nightingales 142 CHAPTER 5 Bitter Confusions : Barrett Browning among the Nightingales 169 APPENDIX I Nightingales in Classical Literature 226 APPENDIX II ...
... English Nightingales 75 CHAPTER 4 Fragmentation and Alienation : Victorian Nightingales 142 CHAPTER 5 Bitter Confusions : Barrett Browning among the Nightingales 169 APPENDIX I Nightingales in Classical Literature 226 APPENDIX II ...
Page 14
... English verse ) . This book will draw attention to numer- ous studies of individual symbolic birds , studies which seem so often to be descriptive , detailing the appearance of the trope with- out analyzing its wider significance . But ...
... English verse ) . This book will draw attention to numer- ous studies of individual symbolic birds , studies which seem so often to be descriptive , detailing the appearance of the trope with- out analyzing its wider significance . But ...
Page 16
... English poetry is ... the postprophetic moment , when the theme of loss merges with that of voice — when , in fact , a ' lost voice ' becomes the subject or moving force of poetic song.1 As a tale which speaks of the silencing of the ...
... English poetry is ... the postprophetic moment , when the theme of loss merges with that of voice — when , in fact , a ' lost voice ' becomes the subject or moving force of poetic song.1 As a tale which speaks of the silencing of the ...
Page 30
... English elegies , Lycidas and Adonais , should be written by poets who directly associated the art of poetry and their own poetic voice with that of the nightingale.43 On the other hand connections with pastoral and elegy provided a ...
... English elegies , Lycidas and Adonais , should be written by poets who directly associated the art of poetry and their own poetic voice with that of the nightingale.43 On the other hand connections with pastoral and elegy provided a ...
Page 34
... English it has unusually close relationship to earlier Latin poems on the night- ingale in which the birdsong draws the Christian soul to appreci- ate both Creator and creation . There seems to be no connection between this ' sweet ...
... English it has unusually close relationship to earlier Latin poems on the night- ingale in which the birdsong draws the Christian soul to appreci- ate both Creator and creation . There seems to be no connection between this ' sweet ...
Contents
| 7 | |
| 9 | |
| 16 | |
| 34 | |
Medieval English Nightingales | 75 |
Victorian Nightingales | 142 |
Barrett Browning among the Nightingales | 169 |
Nightingales in Classical Literature | 226 |
Christian Latin Poems | 236 |
Notes | 247 |
Bibliography | 284 |
Index of Names and Titles | 294 |
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Common terms and phrases
aesthetic Alcuin ambiguity appears argument aristocratic Aristophanes associated attempts Aurora Leigh Barrett Browning Barrett Browning's Bianca bird boundaries C.S. Lewis Caterina century chapter Chaucer chivalric Christian classical conflict courtly critics Cuckoo cultural daisy debate defined denies desire discussion disruption Elizabeth Barrett Browning emblematic English erotic expressed female feminine figure Floure Flower Fulbert of Chartres gender genre Greek harmony hoopoe human identity ideology individual ingale Knight's Tale Lady language Latin Leaf Leaf company literature Lost Bower lover lyric male masculine medieval medieval literature Mermin narrator natural world night nightin nightingale Ovid passion past patterns Patterson Paulus Albarus Pecham's Philomela myth poem poet poetic voice points political Procne reader references relation religious repression role secular sexual significance silence social song Sophocles space speak stanza structure symbolic Tereus textual Thrush tion trans University Press verse victim Victorian poetry woman women writing