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 86
Page 11
... song after her trans- formation into a nightingale , a bird whose Greek name ( aedon ) simultaneously stands for creature , poet and poetry , marking the boundary of the human in the world of nature by singing in the wooded regions ...
... song after her trans- formation into a nightingale , a bird whose Greek name ( aedon ) simultaneously stands for creature , poet and poetry , marking the boundary of the human in the world of nature by singing in the wooded regions ...
Page 14
... 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 representation are significant in their own right ...
... 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 representation are significant in their own right ...
Page 15
... song — has meant that I wish to question the restriction of the patterns of the enlightenment world . If that world is , as postmodernist critics insist , fragmenting , then the patterns of pre - enlightenment literature are rich ...
... song — has meant that I wish to question the restriction of the patterns of the enlightenment world . If that world is , as postmodernist critics insist , fragmenting , then the patterns of pre - enlightenment literature are rich ...
Page 16
... song.1 As a tale which speaks of the silencing of the violated , the chaos unleashed by the act of violation and the commemoration of both elements through the voice of poetry , the myth of Philomela haunts classical Greek literature ...
... song.1 As a tale which speaks of the silencing of the violated , the chaos unleashed by the act of violation and the commemoration of both elements through the voice of poetry , the myth of Philomela haunts classical Greek literature ...
Page 17
... song . In particular it articulates the difficulties of women ( either erotic object or maternal figure , both defining the masculine principle ) , draws attention to the complex relationship between eroticism and victimization , and ...
... song . In particular it articulates the difficulties of women ( either erotic object or maternal figure , both defining the masculine principle ) , draws attention to the complex relationship between eroticism and victimization , and ...
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