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 46
Page 36
... natural world and hence serves as an index of the shifting relations of different categories . Running alongside the literary tradition is an equally potent oral / folk poetry in which the nightingale's spring voice links the human and ...
... natural world and hence serves as an index of the shifting relations of different categories . Running alongside the literary tradition is an equally potent oral / folk poetry in which the nightingale's spring voice links the human and ...
Page 38
... natural world have particular sig- nificance in such changes . The nightingale's appearance as the voice of the natural world in Christian Latin poetry is thus sig- nificant in its own right — quite apart from the separate matter of ...
... natural world have particular sig- nificance in such changes . The nightingale's appearance as the voice of the natural world in Christian Latin poetry is thus sig- nificant in its own right — quite apart from the separate matter of ...
Page 41
... world ( avia rura ) in attempts to gather all signification into the one perfect harmonious place ( the divinely ... natural ; human and divine — the poetry of the nightingale is available to all . The emphasis on balance and ...
... world ( avia rura ) in attempts to gather all signification into the one perfect harmonious place ( the divinely ... natural ; human and divine — the poetry of the nightingale is available to all . The emphasis on balance and ...
Page 42
... natural points to an ideological investment in the asocial , the apolitical , the individual.23 In line with this it ... world , the world of God from which he is so easily sundered , Eugenius's poem is full of. 42 Interpreting ...
... natural points to an ideological investment in the asocial , the apolitical , the individual.23 In line with this it ... world , the world of God from which he is so easily sundered , Eugenius's poem is full of. 42 Interpreting ...
Page 43
... world characterized by ease and harmony , a world which does not exist in opposition to the human . In this later ... natural worlds in place of a concern with order.26 It is an ideal that reflects multiple anxieties ranging from ...
... world characterized by ease and harmony , a world which does not exist in opposition to the human . In this later ... natural worlds in place of a concern with order.26 It is an ideal that reflects multiple anxieties ranging from ...
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