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. |
From inside the book
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Page 5
... Latin Texts 16 CHAPTER 2 Christian Nightingales : Transforming the Classical to the Christian ; the Sacred to the Erotic 34 CHAPTER 3 Debating Class and Gender : Medieval English Nightingales 75 CHAPTER 4 Fragmentation and Alienation ...
... Latin Texts 16 CHAPTER 2 Christian Nightingales : Transforming the Classical to the Christian ; the Sacred to the Erotic 34 CHAPTER 3 Debating Class and Gender : Medieval English Nightingales 75 CHAPTER 4 Fragmentation and Alienation ...
Page 7
... Latin texts . Ruth Evans provided useful com- ments on the medieval chapters . Discussions in the Staff Seminar on Texts and Theories , organized by Duncan Large at the University of Wales Swansea , helped to crystallize certain ideas ...
... Latin texts . Ruth Evans provided useful com- ments on the medieval chapters . Discussions in the Staff Seminar on Texts and Theories , organized by Duncan Large at the University of Wales Swansea , helped to crystallize certain ideas ...
Page 11
... Latin and medieval texts before making a huge jump and turning to the Victorians , and , especially , to Barrett Browning . The major focus is on the literary nightingale , whose roots lie in the Greek myth of Philomela , the raped and ...
... Latin and medieval texts before making a huge jump and turning to the Victorians , and , especially , to Barrett Browning . The major focus is on the literary nightingale , whose roots lie in the Greek myth of Philomela , the raped and ...
Page 16
... Latin Texts After resolving a border dispute with the help of Tereus , king of Thrace ( and one of the sons of Ares ) , Pandion , king of Athens , rewards his ally by giving him his eldest daughter , Procne , in marriage . After several ...
... Latin Texts After resolving a border dispute with the help of Tereus , king of Thrace ( and one of the sons of Ares ) , Pandion , king of Athens , rewards his ally by giving him his eldest daughter , Procne , in marriage . After several ...
Page 17
... Latin texts . I start by looking at the fertile transformation at the centre of the myth : the translation of silenced girl to singing bird . One way of interpreting metamorphosis is to see it as effecting closure on a cycle of ...
... Latin texts . I start by looking at the fertile transformation at the centre of the myth : the translation of silenced girl to singing bird . One way of interpreting metamorphosis is to see it as effecting closure on a cycle of ...
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