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
Results 1-5 of 11
Page 18
... Ovid's mythological narrative to the scientific ' objectivity ' of Pliny . ( Texts are given in Appendix I ) . Voice and Silence : The Myth of Philomela The figure of Philomela illustrates the loss of individual and social identity that ...
... Ovid's mythological narrative to the scientific ' objectivity ' of Pliny . ( Texts are given in Appendix I ) . Voice and Silence : The Myth of Philomela The figure of Philomela illustrates the loss of individual and social identity that ...
Page 31
... Ovid — whose version of the Philomela myth throws up ques- tions about the nature of the Roman state — and Pliny — whose rational ' scientific ' description cloaks his narrative's collusion with imperial ideals . Ovid's version in ...
... Ovid — whose version of the Philomela myth throws up ques- tions about the nature of the Roman state — and Pliny — whose rational ' scientific ' description cloaks his narrative's collusion with imperial ideals . Ovid's version in ...
Page 32
... Ovid is interested primarily in the individual figures , competing and attacking one another in fierce and agonized revenge . Ovid contains this chaos , not by achieving any balance , but by shifting to another unstable situation . The ...
... Ovid is interested primarily in the individual figures , competing and attacking one another in fierce and agonized revenge . Ovid contains this chaos , not by achieving any balance , but by shifting to another unstable situation . The ...
Page 33
... Ovid , for his description articulates the values of his urban society and its espousal of a defining reason rather than questioning ( as does Ovid's metamorphosis ) its boundaries and their arbitrary nature . Pliny's ' rational ...
... Ovid , for his description articulates the values of his urban society and its espousal of a defining reason rather than questioning ( as does Ovid's metamorphosis ) its boundaries and their arbitrary nature . Pliny's ' rational ...
Page 38
... Ovid and Pliny draw on the mythic bird to explore their relations to their state ideology : in both cases , the literary voice is directly related to a concrete , existing situation . In early Christian Latin poetry , however , the ...
... Ovid and Pliny draw on the mythic bird to explore their relations to their state ideology : in both cases , the literary voice is directly related to a concrete , existing situation . In early Christian Latin poetry , however , the ...
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 |
Other editions - View all
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