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 21
... 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 to speak ' by seeing any rebellion in terms of the murderous conclusion of ...
... 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 to speak ' by seeing any rebellion in terms of the murderous conclusion of ...
Page 22
... speak for her.16 17 I would argue that the human story caught within the myth may point towards a ' deadly ' structure but the very inscription of that myth points outwards to other readings and possibilities.17 The nightingale's voice ...
... speak for her.16 17 I would argue that the human story caught within the myth may point towards a ' deadly ' structure but the very inscription of that myth points outwards to other readings and possibilities.17 The nightingale's voice ...
Page 23
... speaking outside the civil community but referring to that which is within it : all these refer to both poetry and the feminine . Yet if the myth of Philomela is considered as in part about the regaining of the lost voice , it need not ...
... speaking outside the civil community but referring to that which is within it : all these refer to both poetry and the feminine . Yet if the myth of Philomela is considered as in part about the regaining of the lost voice , it need not ...
Page 27
... speak to his past , with shared themes of incest , mutilation , displacement . Yet when he arrives , Colonus becomes the place of golden flowers and fertility , the place outside the boundaries of the violating world , the place of art ...
... speak to his past , with shared themes of incest , mutilation , displacement . Yet when he arrives , Colonus becomes the place of golden flowers and fertility , the place outside the boundaries of the violating world , the place of art ...
Page 30
... speaking self - reflexively of the loss of the perfect poetic voice . Violation and reconstitution thus form a ... speak ' ) . It is significant that two of the greatest of English elegies , Lycidas and Adonais , should be written ...
... speaking self - reflexively of the loss of the perfect poetic voice . Violation and reconstitution thus form a ... speak ' ) . It is significant that two of the greatest of English elegies , Lycidas and Adonais , should be written ...
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