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 21
... denies the fictional construction of the tale as a whole : 15 the fact that Philomela is a woman means that , from Joplin's point of view , she is always a victim , even if her experience allows her access to a special sense of her ...
... denies the fictional construction of the tale as a whole : 15 the fact that Philomela is a woman means that , from Joplin's point of view , she is always a victim , even if her experience allows her access to a special sense of her ...
Page 26
... denying the human charac- teristic of rationality . It is no surprise that Clytemnestra , mistress of deceiving words , 36 should employ the conventional trope when she remarks that Cassandra speaks with a swallow's tongue . Like ...
... denying the human charac- teristic of rationality . It is no surprise that Clytemnestra , mistress of deceiving words , 36 should employ the conventional trope when she remarks that Cassandra speaks with a swallow's tongue . Like ...
Page 33
... denying boundaries and seeing only things . With Pliny competition is no longer between the nightingale and an aggressive representative of political or gendered power structures but between a group of undifferen- tiated individual ...
... denying boundaries and seeing only things . With Pliny competition is no longer between the nightingale and an aggressive representative of political or gendered power structures but between a group of undifferen- tiated individual ...
Page 46
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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