SOURCE: Le Saux, Françoise. “Song and Harmony in The Owl and the Nightingale.” Etudes de Lettres 4 (October-December 1987): 3-9.

In the following essay, Le Saux maintains that The Owl and the Nightingale offers “a lesson on the nature of harmony and love” rather than a depiction of “discord and contentiousness.”

The theme of song is at the heart of the Middle English debate poem The Owl and the Nightingale. It is the main cause for contention between the two birds, and the poet explicitly states that song is the principal issue of the debate:

& hure & hure of othere[s] songe Hi holde plaiding suthe stronge.(1) 

The exact significance of the theme of song in the poem has however caused some debate among the critics. For some, we are in the presence of an allegory, representing for example different schools of poetry or preaching. But these theories often do...