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 23
Page 25
... expressed directly but exists in a shadowy subtext of associations which are all the more powerful for being unspoken . Ambiguity and Violence : The Notes of the Drama To an unstable Athens the nightingale's mythic background had a ...
... expressed directly but exists in a shadowy subtext of associations which are all the more powerful for being unspoken . Ambiguity and Violence : The Notes of the Drama To an unstable Athens the nightingale's mythic background had a ...
Page 28
... expressed in the drama in the harmonious lament for violation and the chaos that violation unleashed , but sometimes in the mixing of sorrow with joy as the voice of poetry that sings from the freer space of the woods . Of the. 28 ...
... expressed in the drama in the harmonious lament for violation and the chaos that violation unleashed , but sometimes in the mixing of sorrow with joy as the voice of poetry that sings from the freer space of the woods . Of the. 28 ...
Page 32
... and violation of the world of experience onto the figure of Philomela while simultaneously recording the violations expressed in the myth itself . As a final note , the scientific description of Pliny. 32 Interpreting Nightingales.
... and violation of the world of experience onto the figure of Philomela while simultaneously recording the violations expressed in the myth itself . As a final note , the scientific description of Pliny. 32 Interpreting Nightingales.
Page 39
... expressed in a different language . Even if the prison diary of the second - century martyr , Perpetua , was originally written in vulgar Latin , it was immediately translated into Greek.9 But with Constantine's conversion , his peace ...
... expressed in a different language . Even if the prison diary of the second - century martyr , Perpetua , was originally written in vulgar Latin , it was immediately translated into Greek.9 But with Constantine's conversion , his peace ...
Page 47
... expressed the conjunction of the place of art with the place of the divine , it was free to be seen as human again . Traditional folk tales of anthropomorphic animals reappear in religious literature , the first beast epic to be re ...
... expressed the conjunction of the place of art with the place of the divine , it was free to be seen as human again . Traditional folk tales of anthropomorphic animals reappear in religious literature , the first beast epic to be re ...
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