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 27
... harmony . Thus the singing birds have two meanings for Oedipus depending on where he stands in relation to the defining boundaries of polis and wood . Travelling towards Colonus , but still outside its sacred place , the nightingales ...
... harmony . Thus the singing birds have two meanings for Oedipus depending on where he stands in relation to the defining boundaries of polis and wood . Travelling towards Colonus , but still outside its sacred place , the nightingales ...
Page 29
... harmony . The very simplicity and completeness of Utopia , of an idyllic world , 42 throws the ( omitted ) corruptions of the town into relief . Pastoral poetry is a sophisti- cated urban product : able to manipulate the defining ...
... harmony . The very simplicity and completeness of Utopia , of an idyllic world , 42 throws the ( omitted ) corruptions of the town into relief . Pastoral poetry is a sophisti- cated urban product : able to manipulate the defining ...
Page 41
... harmony at all levels — human and natural ; human and divine — the poetry of the nightingale is available to all . The emphasis on balance and harmony is charac- teristic of Christian art of the seventh century ; to the extent that ...
... harmony at all levels — human and natural ; human and divine — the poetry of the nightingale is available to all . The emphasis on balance and harmony is charac- teristic of Christian art of the seventh century ; to the extent that ...
Page 42
... harmony of the spheres , Creation's original and perfect melodies , 19 and that Christian music and poetry should attempt to replicate it . Neoplatonic veneration for harmony and music magnified the significance of figures such as the ...
... harmony of the spheres , Creation's original and perfect melodies , 19 and that Christian music and poetry should attempt to replicate it . Neoplatonic veneration for harmony and music magnified the significance of figures such as the ...
Page 43
... harmony , a world which does not exist in opposition to the human . In this later poem the human relation to God's creation does not rest on a technical analysis of the beau- tiful voice but on an emotional response , of gratitude , of ...
... harmony , a world which does not exist in opposition to the human . In this later poem the human relation to God's creation does not rest on a technical analysis of the beau- tiful voice but on an emotional response , of gratitude , of ...
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