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 9
... male listener away from human life into the bloodless world of art , draining him of his ability to act . From this perspective the poetic nightingale shares the power of Spenser's Acrasia , dissolv- ing young men with sensuous delight ...
... male listener away from human life into the bloodless world of art , draining him of his ability to act . From this perspective the poetic nightingale shares the power of Spenser's Acrasia , dissolv- ing young men with sensuous delight ...
Page 11
... male of the species while the female does not sing is itself significant . The transposition of the gender of the literary figure thus implies that it carries qualities that mark it out as ' feminine ' over and above the actual sex of ...
... male of the species while the female does not sing is itself significant . The transposition of the gender of the literary figure thus implies that it carries qualities that mark it out as ' feminine ' over and above the actual sex of ...
Page 12
... male bird , distinctly different from that of the Greeks , in that he sings joyously in sunlight during a spring characterized overwhelmingly by sexual reawakening ; he interacts directly with the human world , encouraging lovers and ...
... male bird , distinctly different from that of the Greeks , in that he sings joyously in sunlight during a spring characterized overwhelmingly by sexual reawakening ; he interacts directly with the human world , encouraging lovers and ...
Page 13
... male ? ' Oral traditions versus literary ones ; the vigorous male set against the tragic female ; day against night . The key interest thus seems to lie in gender , but as to be expected in a figure which serves only to reflect the ...
... male ? ' Oral traditions versus literary ones ; the vigorous male set against the tragic female ; day against night . The key interest thus seems to lie in gender , but as to be expected in a figure which serves only to reflect the ...
Page 14
... male sing- ing bird is represented as female in classical poetry and all liter- ature written in that tradition is equally significant , highlighting the cultural associations between femininity and submissiveness ( the bird sings ...
... male sing- ing bird is represented as female in classical poetry and all liter- ature written in that tradition is equally significant , highlighting the cultural associations between femininity and submissiveness ( the bird sings ...
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