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
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Page 10
... lyric poetry can easily slip into an angel of death and paralysis for the female writer or auditor . It is a problem that Elizabeth Barrett Browning's 1861 poem ' Bianca among the Nightingales ' confronts head on : —Oh , owl - like ...
... lyric poetry can easily slip into an angel of death and paralysis for the female writer or auditor . It is a problem that Elizabeth Barrett Browning's 1861 poem ' Bianca among the Nightingales ' confronts head on : —Oh , owl - like ...
Page 12
... lyric poetry especially ( in- cluding that of Provence and Germany ) , the nightingale is a vigorous male bird , distinctly different from that of the Greeks , in that he sings joyously in sunlight during a spring characterized ...
... lyric poetry especially ( in- cluding that of Provence and Germany ) , the nightingale is a vigorous male bird , distinctly different from that of the Greeks , in that he sings joyously in sunlight during a spring characterized ...
Page 13
... lyrics rooted in an individual , not hierarchical , experience of ecstasy ; in the second , the chang- ing status of the nightingale in poetry points to the association of particular tropes , especially that of romantic love / fin amour ...
... lyrics rooted in an individual , not hierarchical , experience of ecstasy ; in the second , the chang- ing status of the nightingale in poetry points to the association of particular tropes , especially that of romantic love / fin amour ...
Page 23
... lyric poets ' use of metaphors derived from the art of weaving to describe their own art as a ' web of song ' . 23 Though Snyder sees the use of weaving imagery in Homer as split between women's work ( descriptive ) and intellectual ...
... lyric poets ' use of metaphors derived from the art of weaving to describe their own art as a ' web of song ' . 23 Though Snyder sees the use of weaving imagery in Homer as split between women's work ( descriptive ) and intellectual ...
Page 29
... lyric poets , it is interesting that the nightingale should appear in a number of fragments by Sappho , a woman poet . These passages seem to depict the nightingale in terms of a spring or erotic symbol which seems untouched by ...
... lyric poets , it is interesting that the nightingale should appear in a number of fragments by Sappho , a woman poet . These passages seem to depict the nightingale in terms of a spring or erotic symbol which seems untouched by ...
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