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 11
... sexual desire , or a masculine fear of and simulta- neous fascination with sensuality — though this is part of its signifi- cance . Nightingales were associated with poetry long before the Renaissance — and in Mechthild's poem the ...
... sexual desire , or a masculine fear of and simulta- neous fascination with sensuality — though this is part of its signifi- cance . Nightingales were associated with poetry long before the Renaissance — and in Mechthild's poem the ...
Page 12
... sexual reawakening ; he interacts directly with the human world , encouraging lovers and sometimes acting as a confidant . Though associated with love poetry , he is not a figure of the aesthetic . Hatto attempts to qualify the ...
... sexual reawakening ; he interacts directly with the human world , encouraging lovers and sometimes acting as a confidant . Though associated with love poetry , he is not a figure of the aesthetic . Hatto attempts to qualify the ...
Page 21
... sexual dominance requires the violent appropriation of the women's power to speak.12 Joplin sees the myth as caught within a cycle of ' violation - revenge- violation'13 which assures the continued ' appropriation of the women's power ...
... sexual dominance requires the violent appropriation of the women's power to speak.12 Joplin sees the myth as caught within a cycle of ' violation - revenge- violation'13 which assures the continued ' appropriation of the women's power ...
Page 32
... sexual violation itself ; Procne viciously appraises her son's likeness to his father , cold - bloodedly assessing her now frac- tured duties ; while the once - demure Philomela erupts into the tale , splattered with blood , swinging ...
... sexual violation itself ; Procne viciously appraises her son's likeness to his father , cold - bloodedly assessing her now frac- tured duties ; while the once - demure Philomela erupts into the tale , splattered with blood , swinging ...
Page 38
... sexual violations and muti- lations inscribed in the Philomela myth seems clear in the way that they are uncannily enacted in the tortures suffered by the early Christian martyrs : torn apart by wild beasts , dismembered or ...
... sexual violations and muti- lations inscribed in the Philomela myth seems clear in the way that they are uncannily enacted in the tortures suffered by the early Christian martyrs : torn apart by wild beasts , dismembered or ...
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