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
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Page 9
... verse . This is the nightingale of the enlightenment subject , familiar as the most romantic of ' poetic ' tropes from the most famous of all nightingale poems , Keats's Ode to a Nightingale , a figure which speaks of unearthly ...
... verse . This is the nightingale of the enlightenment subject , familiar as the most romantic of ' poetic ' tropes from the most famous of all nightingale poems , Keats's Ode to a Nightingale , a figure which speaks of unearthly ...
Page 14
... verse ) . This book will draw attention to numer- ous studies of individual symbolic birds , studies which seem so often to be descriptive , detailing the appearance of the trope with- out analyzing its wider significance . But the ...
... verse ) . This book will draw attention to numer- ous studies of individual symbolic birds , studies which seem so often to be descriptive , detailing the appearance of the trope with- out analyzing its wider significance . But the ...
Page 15
... verse . As a modern Romantic it is fitting that he takes on the role of Coleridge's son as he recalls being taken by his father into ... the wood where the nightingale sang The unbelievable bird who lived in the stories Of almost my ...
... verse . As a modern Romantic it is fitting that he takes on the role of Coleridge's son as he recalls being taken by his father into ... the wood where the nightingale sang The unbelievable bird who lived in the stories Of almost my ...
Page 36
... verse is almost a mirror image of the lamenting Philomela . This difference reflects differ- ent class evaluations of the role of sex , for , in contrast with those who produce written literature , oral traditions emerge primarily from ...
... verse is almost a mirror image of the lamenting Philomela . This difference reflects differ- ent class evaluations of the role of sex , for , in contrast with those who produce written literature , oral traditions emerge primarily from ...
Page 40
... verse and the politics of the urban centres . Paulinus's attempt to align his own voice with that of the bird is far from an emulation of a purely ' natural ' voice , for he sees it as expressing the unqualified voice of God — in clear ...
... verse and the politics of the urban centres . Paulinus's attempt to align his own voice with that of the bird is far from an emulation of a purely ' natural ' voice , for he sees it as expressing the unqualified voice of God — in clear ...
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