The Owl and the Nightingale is one of the first and greatest long comic poems in the English language and one of the best-known and most accomplished of all medieval literary texts. By turns both gleefully trivial and allusively serious, it has been described by literary critics as a most miraculous piece of writing , a marvel of literary art and a truly amazing phenomenon . There is no other edition currently in print and this is the first new English edition of the poem since 1960.
The book contains a lively parallel-text translation in modern English, as well as a glossary, notes and Introduction. The edition has involved a complete reconsideration of the poem's complex textual history, its linguistic provenance and the practices of its scribes, as well as its possible sources.
is lecturer in Old and Middle English, University College Dublin.
Preface
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
Introduction
A: Authorship, Date and Provenance
B: Critical Reception
C: Contexts and Sources
D: Circulation and Transmission
E: Linguistic Features
F: This Edition
The Owl and the Nightingale
Explanatory Notes
Appendices to the Explanatory Notes
A: Owls contrasted with Nightingales
B: The Fable of the Hawk and the Nightingale
C: The Owl’s Wickedness and the Darkness
D: The Fable of the Hawk and the Owl
E: Nicholas of Guildford
F: The Nightingale as the “Bird of Love”
G: The Knight, the Lady and the Nightingale
H: Jealous Husbands
J: Violent Husbands
Textual and Linguistic Notes
Bibliography
A: Dictionaries
B: Other Worklƒ)
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