[In the following essay, Hieatt reviews Kathryn Hume's The Owl and the Nightingale: The Poem and Its Critics, praising this work as a systematic updating of contemporary scholarly debate on the poem.]

That Kathryn Hume's book on The Owl and the Nightingale¹ is the first full length study of the poem may come as a surprise to two rather different groups, those who wonder why anyone would bother to write a book about a work from such an early period in our literature that it is likely to attract only a few advanced students and scholars, and, for opposite reasons, those who agree with Professor Hume that this poem “clearly belongs among the handful of major Middle English poems” and who know that it has been the focus of an extraordinary amount of scholarly controversy. Those who would dispute its place in the canon of major Middle English works are likely to be readers whose interest in the period is limited to the great landmarks of the late fourteenth century. Indeed the language of Chaucer and Langland (and even the Pearl poet) is easier for a contemporary student to read than that of poets who wrote in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, yet admirers of Chaucer will find little in English literature which is spiritually more akin to the master's “gaye style” than this bird-debate which antedates the Nun's Priest's Tale and the Parliament of Foules by perhaps two centuries.

One might not know of this affinity, however, if one were to base a judgment on the scholarly interpretations rather than the poem itself. A remarkable number of such commentaries gives no hint that the poem is at all amusing. The uninstructed reader—presuming that he is not so uninstructed as to flounder in early Middle English—is likely to find the debate entertaining rather than edifying, and may be astounded to learn from the critics that he has been reading a treatise on the triumph of Christian asceticism over pagan amorality, or a partisan commentary on the poetry, or music, or politics, of the period; and so forth. As Hume rightly points out, there are two very large difficulties to be faced here. One is that all of these conflicting accounts of the “real meaning” of the poem cannot simultaneously be true ones, yet those who have advanced the various more-or-less allegorical interpretations have not bothered to compare their own readings with those of others to show why one should be preferred. The other problem is that no such reading takes account of all aspects of the poem. Those who wish to see in it a religious moral or the like have chosen certain selected lines and passages on which to base their arguments, while those who see the meaning as bearing on such contemporary events and issues as the conflict between Becket and Henry II or the pros and cons of astrology have concentrated on sections which they can use to argue the relevance of their particular subjects. Large swatches of the poem dealing with the toilet and dietary habits of the birds concerned have been, inter alia, quite overlooked by most of the earnest seekers for truth, as Hume points out again and again.

Sensibly enough, she starts with a chapter outlining the problems of text, date, authorship, and, most importantly, interpretation; she then turns to specific approaches in the following chapters. Chapter 2 explores the question of “the avian nature of the protagonists,” summarizing various conclusions of critics who have concentrated on this or that bit of bird lore to explain the roles of the debates. Conclusions on this matter have been, like those on others, contradictory. Hume shows justified impatience with those who advocate concentrating on any one particular tradition without tackling the question of why that particular tradition is to be preferred to another. She concludes that the often ambiguous mixture of bird and human traits gives the poem its potentiality for “dualities and incongruities,” which “are the natural milieu of satire.” Chapter 3 then considers the debate form of the poem. After examining a number of other literary debates, Hume argues that the non-human character of the debaters is an indication that their personal concerns are very unlikely to be meant as comments on serious and important human issues and that neither bird is meant to be seen as definitively winning the argument. These conclusions are, of course, incompatible with the views of those who see the poem as an allegorical statement of any kind.

Thus the next two chapters turn to allegorical readings. Chapter 4, “Intellectual and Religious Interpretations,” covers views ranging from the simple one that the two birds represent gloom vs. joy to such complex readings as those which trace specific intellectual and/or moral concerns throughout the poem. None of these can, of course, account for all the diverse elements of the debate. Chapter 5, “Historical and Political Interpretations,” investigates lines which may seem rather more promising in view of the usefulness of the beast fable form for just these purposes, but here, too, Hume shows how every proposed reading fails to take all of the poem into account, and, moreover, that there are ways in which the poem simply does not have “the earmarks of political allegory”—such as “a clear context” and “a definite outcome.” Then, before going on to the approach advocated in Chapter 7, “The Potentialities of Burlesque-Satire Interpretation,” she devotes Chapter 6 to an analysis of the poem's “Structure and Sequential Impact.”

This is the strategic place for such an analysis. Hume's own reading of the poem demands that we take account of its total impact and the sequence of its parts, not just selected bits. From this chapter emerges her own view of the subject of the poem: quarrelling, “human contentiousness.” The case for this as the only completely valid subject of the poem is carried a step further in Chapter 7, which discusses the views previously advanced by those of us who have seen the work as primarily satirical or humourous, and develops the argument introduced earlier in the book that the preferment sought by the putative author, Nicholas of Guildford, was in the capacity of judge or arbitrator. The argument is consistent with the content of the poem and is generally persuasive, although not absolutely so in every detail.

One of the weaker points in Hume's reasoning is the claim that the passages on the deaths suffered by owls and nightingales at the hands of men prove that quarrelling “may result in death”; she characterizes this as “a sobering point” which “lies at the heart of the whole poem” (p. 98). Yet on the next page she comments that both deaths are “caused by minor misunderstanding with men.” The latter is surely true. But in what sense, then, is “quarrelling” the cause of death? While it may be obvious that “the grim spirit of altercation often demands the death of one contestant” (p. 110), the men who crucify owls or dismember nightingales are not “quarrelling” with the birds. Nor are the birds who are quarrelling with each other in this debate able to do any lethal damage to each other, no matter how great their ill will may be. To connect the deaths of the birds with their contentiousness would seem to be pushing a good point too far. Still, Hume may be right in seeing the “moral” of it all as the advisability of arbitration, and, thus, in interpreting the poem as a plea for a post for the admirable Nicholas where he can use his skills to avoid fatalities in similar disputes. But it must also be noted that her evidence that Nicholas was, or could have been, seeking such preferment remains a little shaky, which is to be regretted. It is an intriguing point and one could wish Hume had found more solid evidence that this was possible and probable.

The only previous critics to have evaluated, and rejected, any number of the multitude of interpretations of The Owl and the Nightingale have been those of us who threw up our hands and declared a-pox-on-all-your-houses, proposing that readers take another look at the poem's humour. None of us has attempted to do what Hume has done and thoroughly analyze the pros and cons of all past proposals. The present analysis is, then, not only justifiable but a much needed job of housecleaning. Perhaps it will have the salutary effect of sending readers back to the poem. While it cannot be said that Hume's own reading is startlingly original, since it is basically an elaboration of proposals made by others in the last decade or so, there is much to be said for both her ends and her means. Although almost every chapter focuses in one way or another on approaches which have previously been explored by several other critics, the author's own views unfold gradually throughout the book, building up a logical and coherent argument step by step. Dividing the material into units which allow this approach has its drawbacks, for it leads inevitably to a certain amount of repetition: the same key objections are bound to crop up again and again. Nevertheless, repetitions and all, the author has conformed well to the method advocated by Sir Francis Bacon: “If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.”

Or more or less. Hume's conclusions cannot be called “certainties.” They do, however, grow logically out of an investigation of all the evidence available, which is a refreshing change in an area where others have made a habit of selecting the evidence to fit the conclusions.

Note

1. Kathryn Hume, The Owl and the Nightingale: the Poem and Its Critics (University of Toronto Press, 1975). Pp. xi + 139.