This section contains 3,667 words (approx. 13 pages at 300 words per page) |
SOURCE: Eadie, J. “The Authorship of The Owl and the Nightingale: A Reappraisal.” English Studies 67, no. 6 (December 1986): 471-77.
In the following essay, Eadie suggests that The Owl and the Nightingale may have been written by a woman and that the poem is mainly concerned with love and the theme of separated lovers.
It seems today to be fairly generally accepted that the interesting early Middle English poem, The Owl and the Nightingale, was written by one Nicholas of Guildford, and that his objective in writing the poem was to impress his ecclesiastical superiors with his worth and so gain preferment in the Church.1 Among recent commentators on the poem only E. G. Stanley has expressed some judicious reservations on this point,2 though Kathryn Hume, in her recent book on the poem, did not seem to be entirely happy either.3
In fact, the proposition that ‘Nicholas of Guildford wrote...
This section contains 3,667 words (approx. 13 pages at 300 words per page) |