Interpreting Nightingales Gender, Class and Histories [Hardcover]

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.

Acknowledgements
Introduction. Reflecting on the Nightingale.

1. Sorrowful Weaving: Nightingales in Greek and Latin texts
2. Christian Nightingales: Transforming the?Classical to the Christian; the Sacred to the Erotic
3. Debating Class and Gender: Medieval English Nightingales
4. Fragmentation and?Alienation: Victorian Nightingales
5. Bitter Confusions: Barrett Browning among the Nightingales
Appendix 1. Nightingales in Classical Literature
Appendix 2. Christian Latin Poems
Notes
Bibliography
Index of?Names and Titles