SOURCE: Hume, Kathryn. “Intellectual and Religious Interpretations” and “Historical and Political Interpretations.” In The Owl and the Nightingale: The Poem and Its Critics, pp. 51-83. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1975.

In the following essays, Hume presents evidence to refute any purely allegorical interpretation of The Owl and the Nightingale, whether it be intellectual, religious, historical, or political.

Intellectual and Religious Interpretations

What is The Owl and the Nightingale really about? In 1948 Albert C. Baugh denied that the poem was ‘anything more than a lively altercation between two birds,’¹ and almost every critic since has gone out of his way to protest this assessment. And it is difficult to believe that a poem of such length and quality should be merely a jeu d'esprit. Failure to see its meaning has driven critics to try explaining the poem by means of external contexts; in other words, to reading it allegorically...