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 9
... nightingale of the enlightenment subject , familiar as the most romantic of ' poetic ' tropes from the most famous of all nightingale poems , Keats's Ode to a Nightingale , a figure which speaks of unearthly loveliness , the beauty of ...
... nightingale of the enlightenment subject , familiar as the most romantic of ' poetic ' tropes from the most famous of all nightingale poems , Keats's Ode to a Nightingale , a figure which speaks of unearthly loveliness , the beauty of ...
Page 10
... nightingale : an association particularly pertinent to the difficulties of the female artist . The nightingale of limpid , lyric poetry can easily slip into an angel of death and paralysis for the female writer or auditor . It is a ...
... nightingale : an association particularly pertinent to the difficulties of the female artist . The nightingale of limpid , lyric poetry can easily slip into an angel of death and paralysis for the female writer or auditor . It is a ...
Page 11
... nightingale , whose roots lie in the Greek myth of Philomela , the raped and silenced girl who finds a new voice through art ; first through physically weaving her story , and then through the woven notes of song after her trans ...
... nightingale , whose roots lie in the Greek myth of Philomela , the raped and silenced girl who finds a new voice through art ; first through physically weaving her story , and then through the woven notes of song after her trans ...
Page 12
... nightingale , the figure of communication it- self , allows for the perpetual remembrance of her violation . For Hesiod the tale of the nightingale equally serves to commemorate the survival of the poet , assaulted by rapacious princes ...
... nightingale , the figure of communication it- self , allows for the perpetual remembrance of her violation . For Hesiod the tale of the nightingale equally serves to commemorate the survival of the poet , assaulted by rapacious princes ...
Page 13
... nightingale and mourns her dead child , killed and dismembered in cannibalistic revenge for her husband's treachery , he questions , ' Why else should a highly literary , tragic mother - nightingale seem to give way to a merry male ...
... nightingale and mourns her dead child , killed and dismembered in cannibalistic revenge for her husband's treachery , he questions , ' Why else should a highly literary , tragic mother - nightingale seem to give way to a merry male ...
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