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 11
... language in place of the lost object ' — should draw on the Philomela story as part of its consideration of the significance of loss ( ' every poet's question ' ) . 3 My own fascination with the nightingale lies primarily in its asso ...
... language in place of the lost object ' — should draw on the Philomela story as part of its consideration of the significance of loss ( ' every poet's question ' ) . 3 My own fascination with the nightingale lies primarily in its asso ...
Page 26
... language : those outside the civilized world were barbarians and , like Philomela , they babbled as incomprehensibly as swallows : a metaphor which silenced them by denying the human charac- teristic of rationality . It is no surprise ...
... language : those outside the civilized world were barbarians and , like Philomela , they babbled as incomprehensibly as swallows : a metaphor which silenced them by denying the human charac- teristic of rationality . It is no surprise ...
Page 39
... language and liturgy increasingly rooted in Latin , the language of the state , 11 the expanding Church was no longer marginalized to the same extent and urgently needed to differentiate itself from the state for fear of absorption ...
... language and liturgy increasingly rooted in Latin , the language of the state , 11 the expanding Church was no longer marginalized to the same extent and urgently needed to differentiate itself from the state for fear of absorption ...
Page 40
... language is marked by a violent ambivalence towards it , for they fear that they mimic the expression of unbelievers , rather than speaking with the voice of God . 15 The nightingale that appears in the small poem by Paulinus of Nola ...
... language is marked by a violent ambivalence towards it , for they fear that they mimic the expression of unbelievers , rather than speaking with the voice of God . 15 The nightingale that appears in the small poem by Paulinus of Nola ...
Page 42
... language to describe the voice of the nightingale as that which emerges from the leaves , her single tongue weaving to- gether many voices into a fragile and lovely music , Eugenius's bird sings unproblematically out of a divinely ...
... language to describe the voice of the nightingale as that which emerges from the leaves , her single tongue weaving to- gether many voices into a fragile and lovely music , Eugenius's bird sings unproblematically out of a divinely ...
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