Law and Violence in The Owl and the Nightingale

The Owl and the Nightingale is an anonymous Middle English poem that was probably composed in or around Kent in the thirteenth century.¹ The poem recounts a puzzling series of verbal exchanges between an owl and a nightingale as overheard by an anonymous first-person narrator. The birds engage in an apparent contest of wits with unclear rules and no discernible purpose beyond the implicit desire to vanquish the other bird. Their discussion is wide-ranging and touches on subjects as diverse as love and marriage, asceticism and pleasure, religion and worship, housekeeping and childrearing. The contest, however, ultimately remains unresolved, and the poem endorses neither bird’s position. The exchange ends only when the two birds depart for Dorset where they plan to repeat their argument before Master Nicholas of Guildford, who they agree will be an excellent and impartial arbiter. Because the poem addresses myriad topics and lacks a final verdict, many critics have viewed the poem as a code or riddle and sought an interpretive key by treating the birds allegorically as polar opposites such as didactic and courtly poetry or wisdom and fleshly love.² Some have even read the birds as personifications of historical individuals.³ No scholarly consensus has emerged, but critical efforts to define the point of the characters’ opposition demonstrate that the most striking feature of the poem is the birds’ antagonism, an antagonism that overshadows the specific arguments they make in the poem.⁴ Each mostly anthropomorphized bird thinks the other has wronged her, and their hostility frequently threatens to erupt into physical violence; however, just as the poem defers any resolution of their conflict, so it also continually defers violence. In its artful construction of a vehement dispute that avoids violence by appealing to legal devices and formal arbitration, The Owl and the Nightingale negotiates between violence and order, creating a legal culture that is unique to the poem itself—the disputants, after all, are birds—but one that reflects on the need for order to restrain violence. By using legal vocabulary and principles, the poem constructs a juridical domain that exists outside of official legal culture to endorse that official culture, especially law’s ability to mediate between violence and order. In the end, the poem advocates the official legal system’s ability to resolve conflicts peacefully, often by delaying a final verdict, serving not as an advertisement for an individual such as Nicholas of Guildford but as a recommendation for the emerging legal profession.

The poem’s possible association with Kent renders this recommendation necessary, as the county evinces distrust of legal proceedings paired with high levels of violence. The distrust of the law may be seen in the failure of suitors to appear in court to enter their pleas. In the last decades of the thirteenth century, two different sheriffs of Kent explained that they were unable to hold regular county sessions because suitors had not come.⁵ While the presence of suitors may have been a mere formality, they were still required to be present and their absence suggests a general disinterest in legal resolutions to disputes in Kent. Such disinterest is further indicated in the high levels of violence, especially murder, in the county. James Buchanan Given has argued that Kent was one of the two most violent counties in the thirteenth century (after Warwick).⁶ Given maintains that the particular social conditions in Kent, namely the observation of partible inheritance, the prevalence of isolated hamlets and farmsteads, and a general freedom from the constraints of lordship, resulted in disputes that “often could only be settled by violence.”⁷ Thus, The Owl and the Nightingale provides a message that the general population in Kent needed to hear. The arguments constituting the birds’ debate may remain unresolved (and perhaps unconvincing), but taken together they provide a powerful judgment: that the law is the best way to settle disputes. Many critics emphasize the poem’s irresolution,⁸ but that focus obscures the extent to which this poem does present a resolution. The poem maintains that the legal system...