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 87
Page 13
... century debate poem the nightingale's association with the poetry and values of a refined aristocracy is set against the pedantic cleric figured by her masculine enemy ( the Thrush ) ; two centuries later the reification of a more ...
... century debate poem the nightingale's association with the poetry and values of a refined aristocracy is set against the pedantic cleric figured by her masculine enemy ( the Thrush ) ; two centuries later the reification of a more ...
Page 17
... century rational philosophy and the insurgence and development of the oriental cult of Dionysus , the god of excess and drama . The fifth - century interest in transfor- mation stories can be related to the ideological uncertainties ...
... century rational philosophy and the insurgence and development of the oriental cult of Dionysus , the god of excess and drama . The fifth - century interest in transfor- mation stories can be related to the ideological uncertainties ...
Page 24
... century . The reference to the adonia in Lysistrata sug- gests that the cult was a threat to accepted patterns . If war threat- ens the state from without , religious cults and the restive women who practise them threaten from within ...
... century . The reference to the adonia in Lysistrata sug- gests that the cult was a threat to accepted patterns . If war threat- ens the state from without , religious cults and the restive women who practise them threaten from within ...
Page 26
... century when it provided the plot not only of Sophocles ' Tereus but also of ( at the least ) a tetralogy , the Pandionis of Philocles , of which no fragments remain . Elsewhere it appears in Sophocles ' Ajax and Trachiniae ( see p ...
... century when it provided the plot not only of Sophocles ' Tereus but also of ( at the least ) a tetralogy , the Pandionis of Philocles , of which no fragments remain . Elsewhere it appears in Sophocles ' Ajax and Trachiniae ( see p ...
Page 32
... century Athens crumbles under the pressure of its wars , Augustan Rome crumbles from within : for Ovid there is no wished - for place , the only resolution lies in the witty verbal artifice of his text which visits its rejection and ...
... century Athens crumbles under the pressure of its wars , Augustan Rome crumbles from within : for Ovid there is no wished - for place , the only resolution lies in the witty verbal artifice of his text which visits its rejection and ...
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