First full-length study of birds and their metamorphoses as treated in a
wide range of medieval poetry, from the Anglo-Saxons to Chaucer and
Gower.
Birds featured in many aspects of medieval people's lives, not least in
their poetry. But despite their familiar presence in literary culture,
it is still often assumed that these representations have little to do
with the real natural world. By attending to the ways in which birds
were actually observed and experienced, this book aims to offer new
perspectives on how and why they were meaningful in five major poems --
The Seafarer, the Exeter Book Riddles, The Owl and the Nightingale, The
Parliament of Fowls and Confessio Amantis. In a consideration of sources
from Isidore of Seville and Anglo-Saxon place-names to animal-sound word
lists and Bartholomew the Englishman, the author shows how
ornithological truth and knowledge are integral to our understandings of
his chosen poems. Birds, he argues, are relevant to the medieval mind
because their unique properties align them with important religious and
secular themes: seabirds that inspire the forlorn Anglo-Saxon pilgrim;
unnamed species that confound riddling taxonomies; a belligerent owl who
speaks out against unflattering literary portraits. In these poems,
human actions and perceptions are deeply affected by the remarkable
flights and voices of birds.