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
... male sexual dominance requires the violent appropriation of the women's power to 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 ...
... male sexual dominance requires the violent appropriation of the women's power to 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 ...
Page 25
... male hawk : in the former the bird is pierced by the talons of a vicious predator who drags her out of her element ; in the latter the nightingale's status as a mother bird is reinforced as the hawk ( like Tereus ) devours her offspring ...
... male hawk : in the former the bird is pierced by the talons of a vicious predator who drags her out of her element ; in the latter the nightingale's status as a mother bird is reinforced as the hawk ( like Tereus ) devours her offspring ...
Page 36
... male bird which actively interacts with the human world , the nightingale of oral 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 ...
... male bird which actively interacts with the human world , the nightingale of oral 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 ...
Page 37
... male , joyous ) and two traditions ( literary and oral ) becomes more fluid . The extension of literacy and the reassertion of the body in Christian teaching , through emphasis on the physical suffering of Christ , meant that though ...
... male , joyous ) and two traditions ( literary and oral ) becomes more fluid . The extension of literacy and the reassertion of the body in Christian teaching , through emphasis on the physical suffering of Christ , meant that though ...
Page 53
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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