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 60
Page 12
... role accompanies them . A.R. Chandler notes its age — ' the nightingale plays a more important role in European literature than any other bird . Ref- erences to it are found all along the way from Homer to T.S. Eliot ' while A.T. Hatto ...
... role accompanies them . A.R. Chandler notes its age — ' the nightingale plays a more important role in European literature than any other bird . Ref- erences to it are found all along the way from Homer to T.S. Eliot ' while A.T. Hatto ...
Page 15
... role of art as registering the violations of a violating world — and still being associated with beauty and song — has meant that I wish to question the restriction of the patterns of the enlightenment world . If that world is , as ...
... role of art as registering the violations of a violating world — and still being associated with beauty and song — has meant that I wish to question the restriction of the patterns of the enlightenment world . If that world is , as ...
Page 18
... role of the wooded place of the nightin- gale voice in the pastoral ; and comparing Ovid's mythological narrative to the scientific ' objectivity ' of Pliny . ( Texts are given in Appendix I ) . Voice and Silence : The Myth of Philomela ...
... role of the wooded place of the nightin- gale voice in the pastoral ; and comparing Ovid's mythological narrative to the scientific ' objectivity ' of Pliny . ( Texts are given in Appendix I ) . Voice and Silence : The Myth of Philomela ...
Page 20
... roles that follows indicates the centrality of gender to the story . The two sisters can be seen as aspects of the same figure ( woman ) , for if Philomela's rape transforms her into her sister's rival , it also points to a duplication ...
... roles that follows indicates the centrality of gender to the story . The two sisters can be seen as aspects of the same figure ( woman ) , for if Philomela's rape transforms her into her sister's rival , it also points to a duplication ...
Page 24
... roles caught up in the myth.33 Hearing the oracle , the women question ' shall we be the upper ? ' ( see pp . 230-31 ) . The references to the nightingale in Hesiod's Works and Days ( see pp . 226-27 ) , and Aesop's Fables ( see p . 227 ) ...
... roles caught up in the myth.33 Hearing the oracle , the women question ' shall we be the upper ? ' ( see pp . 230-31 ) . The references to the nightingale in Hesiod's Works and Days ( see pp . 226-27 ) , and Aesop's Fables ( see p . 227 ) ...
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