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See also: English poet, the supposed author of The Owl and the See also: Nightingale, an English poem of the 13th century
.
This See also: work, which displays genuine poetical and imaginative qualities, is written in the See also: south-western dialect, and is one of the few 13th-century English poems not devoted entirely to religious topics
.
The nightingale sitting on a branch covered with blossom See also: sees the owl perched on a bough overgrown with ivy, and proceeds to abuse him for his general habits and appearance
.
The birds decide to refer the consequent dispute to Master See also: Nicholas de See also: Guildford, who is skilled in such questions, but they first of all engage in a See also: regular debat in the French fashion
.
The owl is the best logician, but the nightingale has a fund of abuse that equalizes matters
.
Finally, when the See also: argument threatens to become a fight, the wren
interferes, and the two go to the See also: house of Master Nicholas at Portisliam in Dorset
.
He See also: judges, they say, many right judgments, and composes and writes much wisdom, and it is lamentable that so learned and worthy a See also: man should gain no preferment from his See also: bishop
.
The poet, whoever he was, wrote the octosyllabic See also: couplet with ease and smoothness
.
He borrows something from See also: Alexander of Neckham's De naturis rerum, and was certainly
See also: familiar with contemporary French See also: poetry
.
The piece is a general allegory of the contest between See also: asceticism and a more cheerful view of See also: religion, and is capable of a particular application to the differences between the regular orders and the secular See also: clergy
.
The nightingale defends her singing on the ground that heaven is a place of See also: song and mirth, while the owl maintains that much weeping for his many sins is man's best preparation for the future
.
There are two See also: MSS. of the Hule amd the Nightingale, MS
.
See also: Cotton Caligula A ix
.
(See also: British Museum), dating from the first See also: half of the 13th century, and MS
.
See also: Arch
.
I
.
29, Jesus See also: College, See also: Oxford, written about half a century later
.
In the Jesus College MS. the poem is immediately preceded by a religious poem entitled La Passyun Jhu Christ, which, according to a note on it, once possessed an additional See also: quatrain implying that it was written by See also: John of Guildford, perhaps a relation of Nicholas
.
The Owl and the Nightingale has been edited from the Cotton MS. chiefly for the
See also: Roxburghe See also: Club (1838) by See also: Joseph See also: Stevenson, and for the Percy Society (1843) by T
.
See also: Wright; the best edition is by F
.
H
.
Stratmann (Krefeld, 1868), who collated the two MSS
.
See also B
.
Ten Brink, Early English Literature (trans
.
H . M . See also: Kennedy, pp
.
214.-218); See also: Courthope, See also: History of English Poetry; and J
.
W
.
H
.
Atkins in the Cambridge History of Literature, vol. i
.
For some textual See also: criticism see A.E
.
Egge in See also: Modern Language Notes(Baltimore,See also: January, 1887)
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