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 13
... social upheaval appears in the debate between the nightingale and her new enemy : a cuckoo who is characterized as a ' churl ' , or peasant . Conflicts about gender cannot be disentangled at any time from those of class : both are ...
... social upheaval appears in the debate between the nightingale and her new enemy : a cuckoo who is characterized as a ' churl ' , or peasant . Conflicts about gender cannot be disentangled at any time from those of class : both are ...
Page 18
... social identity that accompanies the act of victimization , and throws light on the coercive nature of both formations of identity . Read- ing the myth as a structure of meaning indicates that Philomela appears to lose her place in the ...
... social identity that accompanies the act of victimization , and throws light on the coercive nature of both formations of identity . Read- ing the myth as a structure of meaning indicates that Philomela appears to lose her place in the ...
Page 19
... social order as much as of the individ- ual moment of rape , and as such serves to illustrate the spreading horror of social anarchy . Tereus's link with Ares , the war - god of brute violence , is crucial . He violates all social bonds ...
... social order as much as of the individ- ual moment of rape , and as such serves to illustrate the spreading horror of social anarchy . Tereus's link with Ares , the war - god of brute violence , is crucial . He violates all social bonds ...
Page 20
... the bird : a conclusion which bears out Joplin's emphasis on the intimate connections between social and gender hierarchies in the myth . Indeed , bear- ро- ing in mind the barbarian nature of Tereus , she. 20 Interpreting Nightingales.
... the bird : a conclusion which bears out Joplin's emphasis on the intimate connections between social and gender hierarchies in the myth . Indeed , bear- ро- ing in mind the barbarian nature of Tereus , she. 20 Interpreting Nightingales.
Page 21
... social relations directly into the structure of the myth , Joplin seems to attempt to verify its relevance through a ' kind of reality testing ' which denies the fictional construction of the tale as a whole : 15 the fact that Philomela ...
... social relations directly into the structure of the myth , Joplin seems to attempt to verify its relevance through a ' kind of reality testing ' which denies the fictional construction of the tale as a whole : 15 the fact that Philomela ...
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