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
... significance of loss ( ' every poet's question ' ) . 3 My own fascination with the nightingale lies primarily in its asso- ciation with issues of gender . The very fact that the real singing- bird is the male of the species while the ...
... significance of loss ( ' every poet's question ' ) . 3 My own fascination with the nightingale lies primarily in its asso- ciation with issues of gender . The very fact that the real singing- bird is the male of the species while the ...
Page 14
... significance . But the richness of the night- ingale's song is an insufficient reason for the bird's continuing popularity in literature and I do not intend that this study be descriptive . The differences between the two traditions of ...
... significance . But the richness of the night- ingale's song is an insufficient reason for the bird's continuing popularity in literature and I do not intend that this study be descriptive . The differences between the two traditions of ...
Page 18
... significance of the mythic nightingale in the Agamemnon and Oedipus at Colonus ; glancing at the role of the wooded place of the nightin- gale voice in the pastoral ; and comparing Ovid's mythological narrative to the scientific ...
... significance of the mythic nightingale in the Agamemnon and Oedipus at Colonus ; glancing at the role of the wooded place of the nightin- gale voice in the pastoral ; and comparing Ovid's mythological narrative to the scientific ...
Page 22
... significance . The treacherous hoopoe is shunned , 19 but the nightingale sings of the loss of her child— Joplin's final innocent victim — and though , like Philomela , she is banished into the realms of the inhuman , her liquid ...
... significance . The treacherous hoopoe is shunned , 19 but the nightingale sings of the loss of her child— Joplin's final innocent victim — and though , like Philomela , she is banished into the realms of the inhuman , her liquid ...
Page 36
... significance of the literary space , so it is unsurprising that the folk nightingale should be more concerned with the problematic mo- ment of individual desire than with those aspects significant to those in power within the ...
... significance of the literary space , so it is unsurprising that the folk nightingale should be more concerned with the problematic mo- ment of individual desire than with those aspects significant to those in power within the ...
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