The Owl and the Nightingale: The Poem and its Critics by Kathryn Hume (review)

HUMANITIES 369 Hughes has read most if not all of his 2000 entries. His comments vary from brief summaries to direct criticism, both general and specific and usually very much to the point. Especially useful is the summarization of theories surrounding controversial topics, such as the chart summary of the various theories concerning the origins of Gregorian chant (pp 89--92). Occasionally, as in the discussion of the theories of mensural plainsong (p 83), this involves a certain amount of fence-sitting. The inclusion of reviews of major works is invaluable, though it might well be extended for some entries (Velimirovic's review of no 484, Willi Apel's Gregorian Chant, in JAMS 11,1958, is a case in point). I do not wish to carp about omissions in a bibliography which is extensive without making any claims to being exhaustive, but each reader will find a few works missing he would gladly have included. For example, I regret the omission of Peter Dronke's Medieval Latin and the Rise of the European Love Lyric (Oxford 1966) from the chapter on the lyric, and, however limited it may be, of Fletcher Collins's The Production of Medieval Church Music-Drama (Charlottesville, Va 1972) from the chapter on the liturgical drama. The cross-indexing occasionally produces minor errors: no 700, Vecchi's Uffici drammatici padovani, should be crossindexed under liturgical drama and the index entry for Friedrich Gennrich should not include no 56. These are, of course, minor points and they do very little to lessen the debt which all mediaevalists owe to Andrew Hughes for his vast labour in preparing a bibliography which will, as all bibliographies should, lighten the burden for both the student and the researcher. (DAVID KLAUSNER) Kathryn Hume, The Owl and the Nightingale: The Poem and its Critics. Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1975, xii, 139, $10.95 This is an eminently sane little book, written with clarity and simplicity. The author sets out to strip The Owl and the Nightingale of the multiple and contradictory critical interpretations which hedge it around. Logical analysis becomes a paring knife as she removes layer after layer of previous scholarship, like a chef peeling an onion. It is an admirably neat job. Her own efforts at a new reading will undoubtedly stimulate future studies of this curious and controversial Middle English poem. The heart of the poem is a debate or lawsuit between two birds, similar to that in The Cuckoo and the Nightingale, The Thrush and the Nightingale, and The Merle and the Nychtingaill, compositions in which songbirds argue in scholastic fashion over an abstract intellectual issue. A difficulty in The Owl and the Nightingale is that the two avian disputants are blithering incompetents when it comes to debating. They are flighty, 370 LETTERS IN CANADA erratic, and irrational, engrossed in trivialities and obscenities. The two are incapable of following up telling points, hardly a handicap to them since neither has any real point to make: their logic is the art of going wrong with confidence. Beginning with malicious charges about eating, flying, singing, and bathroom habits, the birds' accusations focus more and more on human concerns as the poem nears its end. Finally, after a graphic description of a nightingale's dismemberment and an owl's crucifixion, the two birds agree to abide by the arbitration of one Nicholas of Guildford, a skilled judge who needs a job. The poem concludes with praise of Nicholas and a plea for his preferment. Dr Hume interprets The Owl and the Nightingale as a satire on quarrelling , a burlesque treatment of human contentiousness. The bird debate that goes nowhere and achieves nothing culminates in a plea for promotion because the crazier and more obsessive the altercation, the greater the need for a practiced arbitrator, a man who will eliminate such 'pride and prejudice.' Her idea is appealing: imbedded in the illregulated idiocy of the birds' bickering is a kind of lawyer's-eye view of human folly, the petty and dangerous games injured men play. The apparent wit and lightness of the poem derives from the contrast between the sober legal terms and procedures employed by the poet and the...