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 10
... birds ! They sing for spite , They sing for hate , they sing for doom , They'll sing through death who sing ... bird — but form a kaleidoscope of conflicting meanings made possible only through the immense reading that Barrett ...
... birds ! They sing for spite , They sing for hate , they sing for doom , They'll sing through death who sing ... bird — but form a kaleidoscope of conflicting meanings made possible only through the immense reading that Barrett ...
Page 11
... bird whose Greek name ( aedon ) simultaneously stands for creature , poet and poetry , marking the boundary of the human in the world of nature by singing in the wooded regions outside the walled enclaves of the ' civilized ' world . It ...
... bird whose Greek name ( aedon ) simultaneously stands for creature , poet and poetry , marking the boundary of the human in the world of nature by singing in the wooded regions outside the walled enclaves of the ' civilized ' world . It ...
Page 12
... bird . Ref- erences to it are found all along the way from Homer to T.S. Eliot ' while A.T. Hatto points out the enormous geographical spread of references to the nightingale , known ' as the bird of love in the Old World from Japan to ...
... bird . Ref- erences to it are found all along the way from Homer to T.S. Eliot ' while A.T. Hatto points out the enormous geographical spread of references to the nightingale , known ' as the bird of love in the Old World from Japan to ...
Page 14
... bird's continuing popularity in literature and I do not intend that this study be descriptive . The differences between the two traditions of representation are significant in their own right , while the fact that a male sing- ing bird ...
... bird's continuing popularity in literature and I do not intend that this study be descriptive . The differences between the two traditions of representation are significant in their own right , while the fact that a male sing- ing bird ...
Page 15
... bird who lived in the stories Of almost my every book ... 9 and concludes with a memory of ' the fixed stars reeling : ' It is the poet's bird , they say . Perhaps I took it home . For here I am , raising my voice , scraping my throat ...
... bird who lived in the stories Of almost my every book ... 9 and concludes with a memory of ' the fixed stars reeling : ' It is the poet's bird , they say . Perhaps I took it home . For here I am , raising my voice , scraping my throat ...
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