The Owl and the Nightingale

Text and Translation

Edited by Neil Cartlidge

The Owl and the Nightingale
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Edited by Neil Cartlidge

Distributed for Liverpool University Press

202 pages | 9-4/5 x 6-9/10 | © 2001
University of Exeter Press - Exeter Medieval Texts and Studies
Paper $34.95 ISBN: 9780859896900 Published January 2001 For sale in North and South America only
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.
Times Literary Supplement

“[Cartlidge] provides a complete glossary and exhaustive bibliography, and an entertaining appendix of comparable works on owls, nightingales, hawks and jealous husbands. His parallel-text translation is exemplary: transparent and lucid, and with more claim to expressive grace than Cartlidge makes for it. This is an edition equally valuable for the student and the specialist.” –Times Literary Supplement, March 2002

Contents

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 Works of Reference
     C: Editions, Translations, Facsimiles and Concordances of The Owl
     and the Nightingale
     D: Editions, Translations and Facsimiles of other Medieval Works
     E: Bibliography of Secondary Texts
     F: Supplementary Bibliography
Glossary

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