SOURCE: Hume, Kathryn. “Intellectual and Religious Interpretations” and “Historical and Political Interpretations.” In The Owl and the Nightingale: The Poem and Its Critics, pp. 51-83. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1975.

[In the following essays, Hume presents evidence to refute any purely allegorical interpretation of The Owl and the Nightingale, whether it be intellectual, religious, historical, or political.]

INTELLECTUAL AND RELIGIOUS INTERPRETATIONS

What is The Owl and the Nightingale really about? In 1948 Albert C. Baugh denied that the poem was ‘anything more than a lively altercation between two birds,’¹ and almost every critic since has gone out of his way to protest this assessment. And it is difficult to believe that a poem of such length and quality should be merely a jeu d'esprit. Failure to see its meaning has driven critics to try explaining the poem by means of external contexts; in other words, to reading it allegorically. My object in this [essay] … is to weigh the usefulness of this approach, starting with the readings which build on issues mentioned in the text (music, astrology) and moving to those which treat the work as an à clef composition. The question is what kind of reading the poem demands. Must the audience extrapolate to allegorical referents to make sense of the work? Is the poem naturally suited to this approach? Can we hope the poem will yield to allegorical assault in the future if past attempts have failed?

The most common and least allegorical of the usual approaches is that which tries to explain the poem in terms of ‘outlook on life.’ The birds' outlooks have been classified as ‘beauty, brilliancy, youth, cheerfulness’ for the Nightingale, and ‘serious, gloomy, sullen old age’ for the Owl, or pleasure and asceticism (both descriptions are Ten Brink's); gaiety and gravity (Saintsbury); Art and Philosophy (W. P. Ker); joyous and solemn (Stanley); and aesthetic and serious (Wells).² Though these terms reflect differing emphases, the nature of the dichotomy discerned by these critics is clear: essentially it is a contrast between gloom and joy, modified by those human interests which the critic thinks to be involved allegorically; thus the Owl's gloom is not mere sourness, but is linked by several critics to religious asceticism. Because evidence of this dichotomy is so important to most interpretations, it is worth examining in some detail.

The difference in outlook suggested by the birds' perches—the flowering spray and the ivy-covered tree-trunk—is confirmed by what we learn of their natural traits and lore. The Owl, for example, is not just a denizen of the dark; she is associated with emotional darkness—sorrow. The Nightingale makes this clear:

Þu singist a niȝt & noȝt a dai,
& al þi song is “wailawai”.
Þu miȝt mid þine songe afere
Alle þat ihereþ þine ibere.
Þu schirchest & ȝollest to þine fere
Þat hit is grislich to ihere.
Hit þincheþ boþe wise & snepe,
Noȝt þat þu singe, ac þat þu wepe.

(219-26)

The Owl agrees that she sings at night, but tries to reinterpret the fact as reflecting quasi priestly or monkish status. The Nightingale accuses the Owl of being unwelcome, disparages the times she sings, and blames her for malicious destruction of men's happiness (411-32), but the Owl has good answers (473-84). Her subsequent condemnation of the Nightingale's cheerful activities is reminiscent of the gloomy disapproval towards worldly joy expressed by religious ascetics. The birds' association with religion is made explicit when they disagree over how man can best prepare for heaven. The Owl says:

Þu seist þat þu singist mankunne,
& techest hom þat hi fundieþ honne
Vp to þe songe þat eure ilest.
Ac hit is alre wnder mest
Þat þu darst liȝe so opeliche.
Wenest þu hi bringe so liȝtliche
To Godes riche al singinge?
Nai, nai, hi shulle wel auinde
Þat hi mid longe wope mote
Of hore sunnen bidde bote,
Ar hi mote euer kume þare.
Ich rede þi þat men bo ȝare
An more wepe þane singe,
Þat fundeþ to þan houenkinge …
Mid mine songe ich hine pulte,
Þat he groni for his gulte.

(849-62, 873-4)

Such passages explain the Owl's reputation for gravity, and the many identifications of her as religious ascetic, moralist, and philosopher.

The Nightingale's character is similarly projected with the help of natural history, lore, and emotional associations. Physically she is linked to flowers, and her song to cheerful music from pipe and harp (22). She describes her own role in glowing terms:

Ac ich alle blisse mid me bringe,
Ech wiȝt is glad for mine þinge
& blisseþ hit wanne ich cume,
& hiȝteþ aȝen mine kume.
Þe blostme ginneþ springe & sprede,
Boþe ine tro & ek on mede.
Þe lilie mid hire faire wlite
Wolcumeþ me—þat þu hit w[i]te!—
Bid me mid hire faire blo
Þat ich shulle to hire flo.
Þe rose also, mid hire rude
Þat cumeþ ut of þe þornevvode,
Bit me þat ich shulle singe
Vor hire luue one skentinge.
& ich so do þurȝ niȝt & dai—
Þe more ich singe þe more i mai—
An skente hi mid mine songe,
Ac noþeles noȝt ouerlonge …

(433-50)

The Owl, however, adds her own interpretation:

Vor sumeres tide is al to wlonc
An doþ misreken monnes þonk;
Vor he ne recþ noȝt of clennesse,
Al his þoȝt is of golnesse …
& þu sulf art þaramong,
For of golnesse is al þi song,
An aȝen þet þu vvlt teme
Þu art wel modi & wel breme.
Sone so þu hauest itrede
Ne miȝtu leng a word iqueþe …
A sumere chorles awedeþ
& uorcrempeþ & uorbredeþ.
Hit nis for luue noþeles,
Ac is þe chorles wode res;
Vor wane he haueþ ido his dede
Ifallen is al his boldhede;
Habbe he istunge under gore
Ne last his luue no leng more.
Also hit is on þine mode:
So sone so þu sittest a brode
Þu forlost al þine wise.
Also þu farest on þine rise:
Wane þu hauest ido þi gome
Þi steune goþ anon to shome.

(489-92, 497-502, 509-22)

The Nightingale emerges from this attack with an undeniable tie to love and sexuality, while the Owl's prurient insistence on the lust-provoking qualities of the Nightingale's song links her to a religious-ascetic viewpoint.

The Nightingale's views on how man can best get to heaven are also important to our understanding of her character:

Wostu to wan man was ibore?—
To þare blisse of houene riche,
Þar euer is song & murȝþe iliche;
Þider fundeþ eurich man
Þat eni þing of gode kan.
Vorþi me singþ in holi chirche
An clerkes ginneþ songes wirche,
Þat man iþenche bi þe songe
Wider he shal, & þar bon longe;
Þat he þe murȝþe ne uorȝete,
Ac þarof þenche & biȝete,
An nime ȝeme of chirche steuene
Hu murie is þe blisse of houene.

(716-28)

Clearly there is good cause to think of the Nightingale as interested in pleasure, gaiety, art, joy, aesthetics, sex, and perhaps in the sort of ‘new’ religion based on love and joy that was popularized by the Franciscans.

With this evidence before us, we can readily understand why so many critics have interpreted the poem as a conflict between some type of joy and gloom. This approach has the considerable virtue that it demands almost no extension beyond the text. We may extrapolate from such indirect statements as the Owl's periodic night songs to the canonical hours if we wish to add a religious touch, but that is hardly a great leap. The birds' comments on human concerns like adultery surely warrant our assuming there is some connection between them and man.

One substantial objection to general-outlook interpretations, however, is the peripheral placement of the evidence. Virtually all of it appears in the first half of the poem, much indeed before line 500. As the arguments unfold, it becomes clear that the controversy centres on service to mankind, and outlook proves of little relevance to the points scored or issues discussed. Indeed, the outlooks seem at odds with the birds' later pronouncements on astrology and fornication. Arrangement of the evidence in this fashion suggests that details about outlook, many of which are extensions of bird lore, were used to endow the birds with personality, not to define the meaning of the whole debate.

Another objection to interpreting the poem by outlook is our inability to equate the birds with consistent human philosophies. The Owl's characterization is straightforward: she represents all that is conservative, ascetic, and solemn, and may readily be labelled priest, philosopher, or monk.³ Handling the Nightingale in the same fashion though, translating her traits and actions into human terms, results in a contradiction: half of her personality establishes her as secular opposition to the Owl; her strong connection with sexual love and her defence of maidens who slip make her seem a lay figure. But her claims to helping clergy of various descriptions (729-42) and her theological opinions on how to get to heaven designate her as a ‘new’ religious figure of the Franciscan or proto-Franciscan type. This duality greatly reduces our hope of identifying her with a consistent human stance, and with that any hope of interpreting the poem solely by means of outlook. One might also question whether female birds would have been chosen to represent serious religious philosophies.⁴

The contradictions inherent in the characterization of the Nightingale seem to me clearest evidence that this debate is not an exploration of two outlooks or philosophies of life. Such an approach leaves too much of the poem out of account; many an avian detail cannot be translated into human terms, and many subjects such as astrology and sexual lapses seem ill-suited to this interpretation of the birds. And since the work's focus shifts from personality to serving mankind, we cannot dismiss the poem as a simple confrontation for confrontation's sake like the quarrels between seasons. We can only conclude that outlooks are of secondary importance, not the key to the poem.

Since study of the birds' philosophies of life does not tell us what The Owl and the Nightingale is about, critics have attempted to find out by examining the issues debated. Some, attempting to avoid allegoresis as much as possible, have combed the text for commentary on any issue which might seem substantial enough to pass for the subject of the whole. Though the kaleidoscopic nature of the arguments discourages such approaches, two have been put forward: Bertram Colgrave proposes music as the theme, and A. C. Cawley astrology.⁵

Colgrave's argument can be broken into three contentions: (1) that the debate concerns musical practices; (2) that the Owl and the Nightingale represent respectively Gregorian chant and troubadour-influenced music; and (3) that the good man from Rome is John the Archchanter, who went to England about 680 to teach the barbarian Englishmen how to sing Gregorian music. The first is simply not adequate. It builds on a relatively small portion of the text, and ignores a great number of other issues. Gloom, joy, lechery, and romantic love all have some relevance to a discussion of music, but the birds' diets and nesting habits do not. Neither do the references to astrology or the Owl's crucifixion. Singing may be an issue, but it is not the issue. Colgrave's identification of the birds is equally questionable. He ignores the fact that the Owl helps men sing conduts at Christmas (481-4), yet the condut or conductus is a motet based, by definition, on a non-Gregorian melody. As for the man from Rome, Colgrave's identification contradicts his own contentions. The Nightingale says (1015-20) that this mysterious figure taught northerners good customs, which Colgrave interprets as ‘good music,’ but the music John the Archchanter taught was Gregorian plainsong, the very type of music the Nightingale is supposedly trying to argue down in the figure of the Owl! All in all, this attempt to interpret the poem as a treatise on singing seems unconvincing.

A. C. Cawley, working outward from some intriguing observations on the specific meaning of the prophecy passage (1145-1330), suggests that the poem is about astrology. The Nightingale has the ‘traditionally hostile attitude of the Church towards astrology’ while the Owl seems to be something like an ‘apologist of a Christianized astrology.’ Each of the disasters mentioned by the birds is indeed attributable to one of the malign planets, and Cawley's observations on this material are fascinating. It is unfortunate for his argument though that the Owl never cites the stars as her source of information; nor does the Nightingale seem to think astrology nonsense: ‘Ich habbe iherd, & soþ hit is, / Þe mon mot beo wel storrewis’ (1317-18). She is merely denying that the Owl can read stars meaningfully, and accuses her of prophesying by means of witchcraft (1301).

Laying this objection aside for a minute, though, we can assess the interpretation's general utility. It explains the Owl quite as adequately as any other reading: her liking for darkness befits a star-gazer; her mournful ‘wailawai’ is appropriate for conveying warning of disasters. The Nightingale though resists identification as usual. Her cheer, the welcome flowers give her, her connection with sex, are all irrelevant to any stand on astrology she may care to take, and so are details of diet and nest sanitation. Though the Owl can be linked to astrology in general, and the Nightingale to Venus, there is nothing in the Nightingale's chief characteristics to motivate her hostility to astrology, and on these grounds I think Cawley's general reading breaks down.

Cawley and Colgrave confine their attentions to issues mentioned directly in the poem, and can be said to read allegorically only in so far as they translate the birds' comments on music and astrological prophecy into human terms. The other principal subject to be mentioned directly—the birds' relative usefulness to mankind—has rarely seemed important enough to constitute the raison d'être of so long a poem. It is no wonder therefore that a more elaborately allegorical approach has attracted so many critics.

Atkins and Owst appear, at first glance, to have worked along lines similar to Colgrave's, but they interpret the poem in terms of completely allegorical referents, not issues mentioned in the text. They take a poem dealing with birds' appearances, birdsong, bird diets, nest building, and birds' deaths (with human adultery and astrology thrown in) and say, in effect, ‘Aha! Obviously this all has to do with old didactic and new courtly poetry writing’ (Atkins) or ‘old thunderous and new joyous preaching’ (Owst). These are rather long leaps, though in fairness we must admit that they are not impossible.

Atkins identifies the Owl as the gloomy defender of didactic poetry, the Nightingale as the cheerful lay defender of the new courtly, secular poetry. He depends for evidence on all the passages concerning singing, working on the hypothesis that singing is to birds what poetry is to man. His approach explains the Owl no better than do those of Colgrave and Owst: in all three she emerges as the defender of the old and gloomy, be it music, preaching, or poetry. But in its ability to handle the Nightingale, Atkins's view has much to recommend it. Her habit of singing outside bowers where lords and ladies are in bed can be explained as a reflection of courtly poetry's concern with the love affairs of the highborn. So can her participation in the clash between the jealous knight and his wife, a role played by a nightingale in one of Marie de France's most courtly lais. Her unwillingness to sing in northern countries, which is a natural fact but is treated as a matter of choice, can be explained as her knowing that there was no courtly culture in the north and hence no place for her.⁶

Furthermore Atkins's approach has one advantage which no other can match: we can feel certain that the author of The Owl and the Nightingale did have some interest in poetry writing. Whether he loved music or was tone deaf, was stirred by one type of sermon or another, we can never know. But he must have been interested in secular poetry or presumably he never would have written such a long specimen. His, indeed, is one of the very few poems not overtly didactic to have been preserved from the pre-Chaucerian age.

But the disadvantage in this interpretation is that, like all the other single-theme theories, it does not account satisfactorily for all the turns the birds' arguments take. Astrology and prophecy lie outside such an explanation, as do all passages related to the protagonists as birds. Nor is there any direct connection between the Owl's crucifixion and didactic poetry. Inevitably, with this approach, we stumble over the irreducibly avian part of the poem which will not adapt itself to intellectual issues.

Do we gain any more satisfying insights by trying to explain the debate in terms of preaching techniques? G. R. Owst has suggested the possibility, though he does not explore it in depth:

Perhaps no modern commentator yet has hit upon the real significance of that remarkable Old-English poem known as The Owl and the Nightingale. Is it not, after all, intended to be an allegory of the age-long rivalry in the preaching of medieval Christendom between those who upheld the gentler themes of love and bliss and an ever-forgiving Redeemer, and those who preferred on the other hand to thunder of sin and Judgment and the Wrath to come? There is certainly evidence that this very problem was continually weighing upon the minds of contemporary churchmen. In the pulpits, at all events, the note of the Owl is heard most often.⁷

The lines which suggest this reading constitute a substantial part of the poem, but not all of it. Like other single-theme interpretations, this one has trouble encompassing all of the issues raised. Again, astrology and adultery do not fit, nor do such details of avian life as diet and nest-construction. It is to the credit of these critics that they do not desperately twist the poem to make it agree with their constructs, but this honesty only makes clearer the weaknesses of this type of approach.

Given such explicit references to religion in the poem and the upsurge of critical interest in the effect religion had on medieval literature, it comes as no surprise that critics have tried to illuminate The Owl and the Nightingale by referring it to a religious context.⁸

Robertson's treatment, though sketchy, has been influential. He identifies the contestants as Christian wisdom and fleshly love, using the same evidence which has attracted other critics. He buttresses his argument with such details as the Owl's ivied stump, which supposedly represents everlasting life, and the Nightingale's flowering spray, which is the flesh that is grass and withers, the beautiful but perishable things of the world. The Owl proves her wisdom by resisting the Nightingale's siren song—she refuses to be snared by delusions, she keeps in mind the last things and is not seduced to improper pleasures.

Nightingale supporters would like to reject so unfavourably sensual an interpretation of her activities as warped, but the evidence is hard to dismiss altogether. The Nightingale admits that it is her custom to sing outside the bower window when a lord takes his lady to bed. Indeed, she asserts, ‘Hit is mi riȝt, hit is mi laȝe / Þat to þe hexst ich me draȝe’ (969-70). And when the Owl accuses the Nightingale of leading maidens into carnal transgressions with her song, the Nightingale denies that she encourages such falls, and insists that the Owl misinterprets the relationship between her song and love, but she cannot deny that there is a connection between them. Though the Nightingale obviously does not consider herself an exponent of near-heretical sensuality, she has potentially compromising ties to it.

Herbert Hässler identifies the Nightingale with the philosophical stance he labels ‘natural man,’ comprising elements of Ailred of Rievaulx's neoplatonism, elements of high courtliness, courtly love, and courtly poetry. The Owl he equates with a religious ascetic stance. His view of the birds' relative merits coincides with Robertson's: the Owl is morally superior, the Nightingale attractive but useless:

Die Dichtung der Nachtigall besteht eben nur aus einer reizvollen Hülle ohne jeden tieferen Kern, da sie nicht aus der Quelle göttlicher Wahrheit schöpft, aus der die theologische Vertreterin ihre Werke bereichert.

(p. 160)

Moreover, both men seem to assume that the point of the poem is a conflict between right and wrong. There are medieval debates with no more meaning than that—Church and Synagogue or The Merle and the Nychtingaill—but all such works grant utterly unambiguous victory to the defender of the right. If The Owl and the Nightingale is the sort of work these men implicitly assume it to be, why is the Owl not shown winning?

When we turn to Peterson and Donovan, we find that they too are more concerned with identifying the birds than with the poem's overall purpose, with similar detriment to their theories. Peterson, who identifies the birds as Robertson does, posits that the whole point to the poem is the listener's attempting to evaluate the birds. But since, according to the evidence he relies on, this could be accomplished by line 900 at the very latest, we would expect audience-interest to have dried up half-way through. And as usual, certain issues the birds argue over do not fit into his reading: adultery, a subject which should be highly significant in a conflict between sensuality and wisdom, does not accord with his scheme—the Owl is too lenient for one of her ascetic views. He explains the Owl's forgiving attitude as reflecting Abelardian concern for intention and circumstances, but it can be argued that the offending wives commit adultery out of spite and anger. The Owl's logic here may be no better than the Nightingale's.

Donovan … starts with the patristic information available and to some extent used by the other three, yet he concludes that the poem is a display of mistaken identities: the Nightingale believes the Owl to be all that is bad in her lore, whereas she is really all that is good; likewise, the Owl mistakes the Nightingale for a songster of carnal love whereas she is really a chorister of divine praise. Aside from the fact that different conclusions can be drawn from the same patristic lore, a further drawback to its use is its relative abstruseness. Few of the author's auditors are likely to have been as well up on the niceties of biblical exegesis as Donovan, especially since the poem is written in English, not Latin. His elaborate explication may be slightly beside the point if the poem was read aloud to a group which had to take its cues from the text and deduce from the Owl's overt religiosity that her claims were to be accorded some credence. In favour of Donovan's approach however is its ability to encompass all the avian details: his theory is firmly grounded in acceptance of the protagonists as birds, not just projections of human abstractions.

Although there is more agreement among Hässler, Robertson, and Peterson than in any other group of critics (excepting those who settle for the general-outlook theory), their interpretations are not without serious drawbacks. And since Donovan worked with the same material but came up with a very different result, we cannot but feel that these attempts were not properly tested.

The characters which the author has bestowed on his protagonists are maddeningly suggestive. They are different enough to imply that he had a specific human dichotomy in mind, yet not so specific and individualized that we can be sure of the referents. Because a dichotomy is obviously present, critics have tried to relate it to medieval struggles of all kinds. But this game is all too easy. Choosing at random among possibilities that spring to mind, I can set up quite a promising case for identifying the Nightingale as a student-clerk, the Owl as a conservative priest, rather like the protagonists in De Presbytero et Logico. As there, it is the cocky student who precipitates the quarrel, challenging the old-fashioned figure of authority. The birds in these capacities could be made out to argue over the sorts of lessons they teach, the Owl preferring the preaching of repentance, the student the intoxicating pleasure and power of dialectic. The Nightingale sees in the Owl only a gloomy old stick-in-the-mud, out of touch with all current intellectual concerns. The Owl finds the Nightingale a dangerous radical, whose shameless curiosity and presumption is the sort which leads men to defile the holy Trinity by attempting to strip it of its mystery with logical analysis ‘like a shopkeeper peeling an onion.’ The student has no interest in going to the far north—there are no universities there, no stimulating discussion of universals. The Owl, however, must preach in such far reaches of Christendom, despite their lack of amenities, and therefore feels somewhat jealous of the student's avoidance of this sort of drudgery and suffering. The Owl sings the canonical hours faithfully. The Nightingale claims to aid others to sing them; this may reflect the method of performing Low Mass, which was normally carried out by a priest aided by one clerk, as is the Vesper service in De Presbytero et Logico. The Nightingale's interest in sex could be taken as referring to bawdy Goliardic student verse, as well as to the courtly poetry which such a clerk might appreciate more fully than this moralistic priest would. The link between Nightingale and sex could also refer to student sexual mores. When the Nightingale curses the Owl, calling on God and all that wear linen cloth to hate her, the Owl-priest might well challenge the right of a mere clerk to call down God's wrath.

Surely this sketch is not much less plausible than the interpretations of other scholars. Like most of their attempts, this one describes personages who would, by profession, agree in general outlook with the birds, and it fits as many portions of the debate into the interpretation as will go but ignores those that will not. The Owl's crucifixion does not fit; neither do the birds' menus or the astrological passages.

Or one might set up another construct—and I have heard this one upheld informally—that had the poem been composed later, it would have to be about monks and friars. This critic was working on the old dating assumptions, but let us examine the possibility for a moment, remembering that both manuscripts could date from as late as 1275. The Owl is a perfect monk, singing canonical hours, taking the appropriate view of how to get to heaven, even (possibly) wearing the white of the Cistercian order. The Nightingale is an equally perfect friar after the manner of St Francis. She believes in love, joy, and song, not gloomy weeping. Friars were the famous, energetic, and influential proponents of joy-oriented preaching; the Owl's preference is obviously for the older, hell-fire and brimstone type of sermonizing, and for the floods of tears which Pope Gregory the Great commended. The Nightingale's claim to religious value (which does not fit theories in which she is identified with lay concerns) fits this interpretation perfectly. All in all, this approach looks promising.

But consider: if the poem was written any time between 1180 and 1200, it almost certainly does not refer to the Franciscans, for Francis was only born in 1181 or 1182, and the order was not given its papally approved rules until 1223. If it was written after friars became widely recognized, why are they never mentioned in the poem? The Nightingale refers to ‘clerkes, munekes & kanunes’ and ‘prostes’ (729, 733), and elsewhere in the poem bishops and the pope are mentioned, but not friars. It seems unlikely that the Nightingale would not overtly ally herself with them in 729 ff. even as the Owl aligns herself with monks in 323 ff., if monks and friars were the ‘real’ debaters. Thus one more promising dichotomy fails to stand up to scrutiny.

Of all the intellectual contexts suggested thus far, none fits perfectly, and none is capable of subsuming the masses of purely avian detail. Unless some fantastic mass blindness has afflicted all critics to the present, it seems unlikely that anyone will present an intellectual frame never before considered, and find it to be just what scholars have always been seeking. Not that there is any insuperable theoretical objection to allegory. But continued attempts to leave the text and find its meaning outside have failed. Under the circumstances, unless a hitherto unnoticed context presents itself, it is probably wiser to stick to what we have: there is really no point to yet another procrustean attempt to make the text congruent with an allegory by lopping off the extremities or stretching and twisting until the two levels coincide.

Another reason for being chary of allegorical interpretations is the nature of the form. A survey of debates of all sorts [uncovers] … no evidence that would lead us to expect the birds' exchanges to be serious and extended commentary on a single issue of import to mankind. Furthermore, most medieval allegories are more obviously just that than The Owl and the Nightingale. Not until Parliament of Fowls, written one or two centuries later, do we find a piece whose issues are as hard to separate from the colourful surface, and even there we do have ample evidence that the basic subject is love. The diversity of proposed allegorical interpretations of The Owl and the Nightingale shows just how unsure we are of what the poem's subject really is. Complete obscurity of the central point is not typical of serious intellectual endeavours in any age, modern or medieval, particularly when the author's problem is so clearly not one of expression.

Critics have striven to transcend the earthy texture of the poem, hoping to find an orderly intellectual framework which will explain and clarify a peculiarly teasing text. But the very difficulties encountered—not to mention the diversity of the results—should suggest that an allegorical solution is unlikely. What sane man, endowed with such skill of expression, would set out to write a serious intellectual treatise and give it such a vehicle? The two birds are emotional, flighty, erratic, and irrational—charming creatures engrossed in their lore, characters, and squabbles. Their vivid and pervasive presence makes much of the poem seem irreducibly avian. If the birds' quarrel was conceived merely as a vehicle for a treatise on preaching or poetry writing, then the poet failed miserably, since expert readers cannot agree on what his subject really was. It seems more likely that the problem lies less in the poem than in the readers who insist on looking for a kind of meaning which the work simply does not contain.

HISTORICAL AND POLITICAL INTERPRETATIONS

Although the objections I have raised to intellectual allegory apply in part to political allegory as well, a fundamental difference between the two forms must be acknowledged. I am not investigating political and historical contexts merely for the pleasure of beating a dead horse. A writer may allegorize intellectual issues for various reasons—to sugarcoat his instructive pill, to provide a pleasant exercise for his readers' wits, or to make a lesson more vivid—but the process of veiling is certainly not undertaken in order to obscure the author's message. A political writer, in sharp contradistinction, may well allegorize for the express purpose of partially obscuring his referents. Those in the know will understand, but the writer runs less risk of affronting his butts than he would by criticizing them directly. Political allegories are generally à clef compositions: at no point, for example, does Dryden's Absalom and Achitophel refer to any but biblical events. If The Owl and the Nightingale were this type of work, we might well hope that the discovery of a ‘key’ would help us make better sense of it. Since political writing offers a reason for concealment, there is some point to examining historical contexts—wishing, to be sure, that we were more certain of the poem's date.

There is another reason for feeling more hopeful about political allegory: a number of such works are cast as animal fables. I am aware of no vernacular examples as early as 1200, but they become quite frequent thereafter; Renart le Bestornei, for example, dates from the 1260s,⁹ and according to U. T. Holmes ‘It was the introduction of much serious [political] satire at the close of the thirteenth century which killed the appeal and consequently the popularity of these tales [stories about Renard].’¹⁰ If The Owl and the Nightingale were indeed a thirteenth century poem, it might be part of this movement. Political allegory as a means of approaching the poem has been little explored until recently, but it deserves consideration. In the first part of this [section], I shall examine the most detailed and impressive theory so far proposed; in the second and third, I shall deal with some other attempts more briefly, and consider generally the potentialities of this approach.

Anne W. Baldwin proposes that the altercation between Nightingale and Owl is related to the struggle between Henry II and Thomas Becket.¹¹ To aid understanding of her arguments, I should like to sketch those portions of the conflict which Baldwin considers relevant, italicizing details supposedly mentioned in the text.

Upon becoming primate, Thomas Becket proved less tractable than Henry II had anticipated, so Henry drew up a list of the powers he intended to exercise over the Church—the Constitutions of Clarendon—and won the acquiescence of all the bishops but Becket, including Gilbert Foliot, Bishop of London and Thomas's enemy. Becket's continued resistance caused Henry to convene a kangaroo court at Northampton and try to humiliate Becket by bringing charges based on his deeds as chancellor. Henry fined him preposterously large sums for these alleged crimes. Becket refused to recognize the validity of the judgments passed on him. When it looked as if Henry would resort to violence in one of his blind rages—possibly murder, quite probably castration or other mutilation—Thomas fled Britain. He returned six years later, but immediately shattered the fragile truce by excommunicating those clergymen who had carried out various canonically illegal acts at Henry's behest during Thomas's exile. His martyrdom followed shortly afterwards (29 December 1170) as the result of just such a royal rage as that which he had fled in 1164. Henry was instantly in danger of excommunication and his land of interdict, but both disasters were averted. Henry's peace with the Church was finally cemented in 1174 when, having promised to give up all his uncanonical claims, he did a long open-air penance at Becket's tomb (which brought on a severe fever). To add to Henry's troubles that year, a horse kicked him on the shin and caused him to be lame for an appreciable time.

Baldwin's choice of historical context has much to recommend it. The Owl's asceticism, if not her gloom, is more or less appropriate to Thomas, and both the Owl and Thomas are martyred. Baldwin's interpretation accounts exceptionally well for that much discussed word ‘foliot’ (868): the Becket-Owl could well speak sourly of foolishness by punning on the name of his worst enemy, who spoke foolishness in the ear of the king and who is on record as having publicly called Thomas a ‘fool.’ Foliot, fool, folly, and foolishness blend very smoothly in this contemptuous exclamation. ‘Ded ne lame’ is also better utilized in this than in other interpretations. Kathryn Huganir's assertion that it was a ‘current saying’ seems flimsy when Baldwin can tie the phrase so exactly to King Henry's ailments of 1174.¹²

Another problem which Baldwin claims her approach surmounts is that of the comments on adultery. The Owl's sympathy for abandoned wives, even condoning retributive adultery, might echo thoughts of Becket, for Henry's infidelities were notorious. Moreover, Henry kept his wife in confinement for a decade (1173-83), rather like the jealous knight of line 1055. Baldwin explains another crux—‘mansing is so ibroded’ (1312)—as alluding to the excommunications and threats of it rife just before and just after Becket's death. The ‘Iesus his soule do merci!’ she construes as consonant with the ecclesiastical view of Henry's soul just before and after the murder—near excommunicate and close to damned. Clearly the historical context Baldwin has chosen offers some really attractive parallels to the poem. However, fuller examination of her use of history reveals some major problems.

First, what is the relationship between the two birds and Henry and Becket? She states that ‘the owl represents Thomas à Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Church's position’ and implies that the Nightingale represents ‘the position of Henry II and his court’ (p. 207). Obviously there is a confusing imprecision in ‘Becket … and’ or ‘Henry II and.’ Baldwin is denying a one-to-one correspondence of the sort usually found in political allegories; she is forced to do so because the Nightingale actually mentions Henry. But at no point does the Owl refer to Becket, and there is no reason to look on her as a supporter rather than the primate himself except the critic's desire for parallelism.

Henry's role in the poem is difficult to pin down. He appears in lines 1091-2: ‘Þat underyat þe king Henri— / Iesus his soule do merci!—’ Baldwin admits that the pious wish is of the sort normally used for the dead, but cleverly argues, referring to contemporary clerical letters, that here it may be appropriate for the spiritual death of near-excommunication. Possibly so, but that interpretation makes the line implicitly critical of Henry. Would the royalist Nightingale have thought ‘so gode kinges’ soul in that much danger? Becket may have thought the king's soul lost, but many contemporaries considered Becket a power-crazy upstart whose opinion of Henry would have seemed anything but impartial or responsible. If Baldwin's historical explanation of the line is correct, it contradicts her interpretation of the Nightingale's character and hence her general reading.

Another passage which Baldwin tries to relate to historical conditions raises even more problems. This is the extended allusion to the jealous knight, his wife, and the Nightingale (1045-1110). Baldwin starts by equating the knight with Henry II—both put their wives under lock and key—and claims that the import of the anecdote is satirical, for Henry was far too guilty of adultery to cast the first stone. Leaving aside the objection that Eleanor's incarceration was partly for political reasons, we should notice that the lines telling how the knight locked his lady up—the only ones with any direct relevance to Henry—are put in the Nightingale's mouth, and she is outraged by the knight's behaviour. Would a supporter and alter ego of Henry's chide the knight and be sympathetic to the wife?

To make things more complex, Baldwin turns around and passes (without denying her first proposal) to the proposition that the knight is not Henry II but rather Thomas Becket, and his lady the English Church, who is being urged on to sin by a nightingale (Henry, or some royalist). She supports this identification with the evidence that even as ‘king Henri’ in the poem vastly overpunishes the knight, so too Henry II tried to impose impossibly great fines on Thomas for deeds which were minor crimes (if that) or for which Thomas had not been duly summoned and accused. Both Thomas and the knight went into exile as a result of such overpunishment. If all of these possibilities are kept in mind, then Henry Plantagenet appears (a) as good King Henry, (b) as the nightingale in the anecdote, (c) as the Nightingale of the poem (who is telling part of the anecdote), and (d) possibly as the jealous knight, though the knight may instead be Thomas Becket, Henry's enemy. I think some order can be found in this chaos but Baldwin harmed her thesis by positing this dual identification.

The attempt to equate the jealous knight with Henry seems most questionable, for with that identification, we find the pro-Thomas Owl siding with the knight (Henry) and the pro-Henry Nightingale abusing and criticizing this knight. Logically, a better case can be made for Thomas as the knight, the Church as his wife. The Nightingale is then a royalist who tries to tempt the Church to desert its rightful master. King Henry punishes the knight excessively for rightfully protecting his ‘wife,’ and for trying to eliminate the tempter. Except for the problem that it is the Nightingale who thinks the living Henry's soul to be in need of mercy, the birds' attitudes make sense. But we know of no referent for the nightingale-tempter, who would have to be a royalist whom Thomas tried seriously to punish, either with the actual penalty for treason (quartering by horses) or with spiritual punishment. (As Baldwin observes, the impenitent in Hell are jerked apart by four devils.) Moreover, Thomas was not fined one hundred pounds, but over thirty thousand pounds. And though Thomas lost his ‘wunne’ like the knight, he could not and did not pay the king anything (unlike the knight, who did pay) because without his lands he had no source of revenue, as Baldwin admits (p. 221).

Another problem is Baldwin's interpretation of Nicholas of Guildford. She tentatively identifies him with Nicholas, Archdeacon of London, a follower of Foliot and frequent messenger between him and King Henry. She suggests that the poem is not a genuine plea for preferment, but rather a satire on church corruption and an angry complaint that benefices could be handed out to such a man. She claims that the poem itself indicates Nicholas's undeservingness. The obscurity of his dwelling she holds against him, for no one, even the Nightingale, would have been ignorant of his home were he really famous for sound judicial decisions. Another black mark is his plea for more than one benefice—unashamed pluralism. And finally, Baldwin takes the statement (201-10) that he once preferred nightingales, though would now choose owls, as proof that in past times Nicholas was a false judge.

In reply, I think it can be said that obscurity of dwelling does not prove anything about a man's qualifications. The pluralism charge looks more damning to us from our modern perspective, but that is because we are influenced by knowing which view of the subject won out. We find it hard to believe that any moral person could be so brazen as openly to demand extra livings, but we are equally uncomfortable with the notion that Henry felt it his right to allow neither appeals to Rome nor bishops to leave England without his permission, or, to quote Baldwin, that he ‘refused to acknowledge [an] interdiction’ on his continental holdings for his part in Becket's murder. Henry's claims and practices were not unusual for the day. Only a few cranks versed in the newfangled canon law would have considered him seriously in the wrong. Though pluralism was disapproved by those concerned with ecclesiastical theory, it was to be decades before the rank and file would be made to look on it as reprehensible. Becket himself held a number of livings before he became chancellor—the churches of St Mary-le-Strand and Otford, and prebends at St Paul's and Lincoln, among others. Nicholas's desire for multiple livings looks suspicious to us, but we may be reading more into it than is warranted.

As for Nicholas's supposed change of views and previous false judgments, Baldwin's interpretation does not seem convincing. Judgments in this context are not black or white, good or bad, where no one but a consciously evil man could choose the bad; the two sides are merely royalist and ecclesiastical. In his days as chancellor, Becket himself prosecuted cases for Henry II and supported the ‘royalist’ side, even to the point of defying his old patron and friend Theobald, Archbishop of Canterbury. Yet at the time, such judgments presumably did not seem immoral to him. That Nicholas has changed his perspective does not necessarily mean his earlier judgments were consciously and deliberately fraudulent. And another drawback to Baldwin's handling of Nicholas of Guildford is her tentative identification of him. Would any pro-Thomas Owl willingly accept Nicholas, Archdeacon of London, as judge? Baldwin does not adduce any evidence that Archdeacon Nicholas changed sides. If he is really meant to stand for some sort of corruption within the Church, why are both Owl and Nightingale, and the Wren as well, so outspokenly laudatory? The Nightingale we could understand, but not the other two. Yet again, one of Baldwin's specific historical identifications clashes with her general interpretation.

Turning from some specific problems which show up in the course of Baldwin's arguments, I should like now to consider the more general drawbacks to this approach to the poem. One is the manner in which the poem is laid out: the closest bond between the Henry II-Becket struggle and the Nightingale-Owl conflict is the martyrdom of Becket and the Owl. In the poem we do not reach this parallel until the last two hundred lines. Baldwin asserts (p. 214) that ‘If The Owl and the Nightingale was written shortly after 1174, the Suffering Servant [martyred Owl] obviously was Thomas Becket.’ Without this parallel, however, the similarity between history and the text is rather slight, and we might well wonder if anyone would make the connection. If the auditor or reader is told that he will learn about King Noble the Lion and his vassal Renard, he can hastily assemble a mental list of kings and vassals likely to be commented on, and make the identification when details establish a clear correspondence. In The Owl and the Nightingale, we have no King Nightingale or Bishop Owl. Instead, we are given a great deal of real life avian detail which seems to establish these birds as birds rather than as historical figures. Baldwin's thesis would be helped considerably if a likeness to the Henry II-Becket quarrel emerged early in the poem, but what does come through is only the dichotomy of cheer and ascetic gloom, neither of which is appropriate to the temperaments of king or archbishop. Thomas was ascetic, but not notably gloomy, and Henry was more famous for his rages than for Franciscan-like joy. Baldwin stresses Henry's adultery as a link to the Nightingale, who is accused of celebrating carnal love and who admits to singing outside the windows of lords and ladies in bed. Singing of love and committing adultery are not equivalent. Moreover, love was not Henry's primary interest, but it does seem to be one of the Nightingale's. And when we look at her other interests—song, helping priests by cheering them, denouncing prophesying—we see little to relate her to the king. The pun on Foliot's name comes relatively early (868), but by itself is a rather slender clue, and the occasional references to King Henry as a figure existing outside the world of this bird quarrel tend to suggest that he is not represented by one of the birds. Is there a point in the poem at which a well-informed listener can feel absolutely sure that these identifications are correct? Even the Owl's martyrdom does not clinch the matter, for her death is patterned on Christ's, not Becket's. For the parallel to be incontrovertible, the Owl would have to be murdered at the behest of the Nightingale, preferably by four other birds. Even if more evidence appeared near the beginning of the poem, I doubt if we would ever feel the assurance in the identification that we do with Absalom and Achitophel.

Another major difference between poem and proposed context is the nature of the issues debated. If The Owl and the Nightingale were really an allegorical reflex of the Henry II-Becket quarrel, we would expect some similarity in the types of issues: at the very least, the birds should be claiming the right to determine each other's movements in various spheres of action. But nothing in the text appears to stand for such points of friction as punishment of criminous clerics or free ecclesiastical elections. The Nightingale does express willingness to take her case to Rome (745-6), but ‘Ich graunti þat we go to dome / Tofore þe sulfe þe Pope of Rome’ looks less like reference to a specific set of appeals than like an expression of confidence in her case. We get no sense of the Nightingale trying to strip the Owl of powers; the birds only try to prove each other useless and disliked by man, a very different sort of quarrel. The perspectives of men and birds are different: whereas Henry II and Becket quarrel over who is going to rule which portions of Christendom, the birds fight over which is better in an abstract sense, and which better serves mankind. This difference affects the spirit of each conflict.

In considering the Henry II-Becket interpretation, we must judge how well it covers all parts of the poem. The avian details have no special relevance, and the antagonism of the birds, built as it is largely on avian characteristics, does not fit the Church-State quarrel well. Points like the Owl's contempt for the Nightingale's refusal to go North fit the birds but not the historical figures. And who in the world of men is the Wren meant to represent? In bird lore, the wren is king, and may be functioning in that role as king among birds in The Owl and the Nightingale, for she does seem to be a figure of authority. But there is no historical figure—king, emperor, or pope—who functioned in the Henry II-Becket quarrel as she does. Baldwin's reading is plausible in its most general outline: vaguely churchly and secular figures quarrel, and the churchly one refers to its own martyrdom, but so many details contradict the identification that it seems to me untenable. At this point then we may ask whether other critics have been any more successful in trying to read The Owl and the Nightingale as historical allegory.

J. C. Russell, working from the same desire to find a historical key, decided upon a different decade, a new generation of figures, and a new Nicholas.¹³ According to Russell, the poem's intended patron is Geoffrey, Archbishop-elect of York, the man needing a benefice Nicholas de Aquila (probably a canon lawyer at Oxford), the Owl and Nightingale respectively Geoffrey and his half-brother Richard I,¹⁴ and the occasion of the poem a visit to Oxford by Geoffrey just after Christmas 1189. Like Baldwin, Russell traces general parallels between the life of an ecclesiast and the Owl, but has rather little evidence to back up the identification of the Nightingale. Like Baldwin also, he offers some interesting explanations of single line cruces, but these tend not to integrate well with the general interpretation.

Russell tackled the poem from the problem of recipient or patron. Geoffrey undoubtedly did patronize men of learning. On the grounds that a poem to Geoffrey might well include him among the protagonists, he notes that the Owl's position changes three times in the course of the poem, as Geoffrey's did throughout the year 1189. First Geoffrey, like the Owl, suffered an initial setback; he had been Henry II's mainstay while all Henry's legitimate sons ranged themselves in opposition; at Henry's death, he could hardly hope that Richard (the new king) would feel well disposed towards him. Then his position was secured by his being appointed Archbishop-elect of York, even as the Owl's position is by skilled rebuttal. Finally, the Owl is technically defeated and surrounded by little birds, and the outcome is left in doubt. Russell equates this with the concerted efforts of Geoffrey's enemies to prevent his consecration. The outcome of this effort was determined only after the papal legate confirmed the election on 14 December 1189, but the poet could not have known of this if he were writing his poem at that time for delivery immediately after Christmas.

Because Russell identifies the Owl as he does, the logical candidate for Nightingale is Richard. In support of this, however, he can only offer the details that Richard is known to have written songs and was associated with the warm south; further, the Nightingale is said to have an army of followers called the ‘here’ (1702, 1790), the mobile force a king could take anywhere, unlike the ‘ferde’ (mentioned in connection with the Owl [1684]) which is strictly for local defence.

Russell finds explanations for a number of short allusions. The singing in the North can represent England-based Geoffrey's antagonism towards Aquitaine-oriented Richard; and more specifically, Geoffrey went to Scotland early in 1189 on Richard's business. The Owl's lenient view of adultery is what one might expect from an illegitimate child of an adulterous relationship. Russell interprets the use of Alfredian proverbs and the reference to good King Henry as a sign that the patron felt flattered by reference to English royalty, and had felt more positive towards Henry than had his legitimate sons. Russell interprets the various issues raised in the debate as sops to diverse elements of an Oxford public audience: astrology for academics, married love for the bourgeois, cockfighting and gambling for parts of both town and gown, and discussion of such moral points as the deadly sins for theologians. And, of course, this interpretation does better than others at explaining the indeterminate jockeying between Nightingale and Owl, with no conclusion given; according to Russell's calculations, the author (who may, in his scheme of things, be distinct from Nicholas of Guildford) could not have known the outcome at the time he was writing the poem. Russell further suggests the intriguing idea that the piece may have been written as a bird poem in the first place on account of Nicholas de Aquila's name, since Aquila is both a family name and the Latin for ‘eagle.’¹⁵

Perhaps the weakest point in this interpretation is the fact that in 1189 Richard and Geoffrey were not quarrelling in the sense that the Owl and Nightingale are sparring—they had done so in the past, but by late 1189, when Geoffrey accepted the archbishopric, their relative positions were settled. The Nightingale's technical victory and her triumphant gathering of little birds against the Owl do not fit the history. Russell equates the little birds with Geoffrey's enemies trying to prevent his consecration, but in the poem the Nightingale is definitely of the same party as the spiteful small birds. In history, Richard was promoting the consecration even more enthusiastically than Geoffrey himself, in hopes that once Geoffrey was made priest he could not make a bid for the throne.

A number of assumptions and arguments do not stand up well to careful scrutiny, the natures of the birds, for instance. Why should a bird supposedly representing Richard be so love-oriented? He was better known for crusading than for singing outside the bowers of lords and ladies. No explanation of the jealous knight anecdote (which figures the Nightingale) suggests itself in this context. Russell describes Geoffrey as ‘virtuous, loyal and cantankerous,’ but those characteristics have nothing to do with the crabbed asceticism of the Owl, and Geoffrey, despite his many years as bishop-elect of Lincoln, was anything but monkish. He had steadfastly refused to enter orders, hoping instead for secular advancement. Russell states (p. 179) that ‘The pious line about Henry II and apparent reference to his faithful follower, Gilbert Foliot, indicate that association with English royalty flattered the patron.’ But the pious reference to Henry and praise of him as a good king (1091-5) are uttered by the Nightingale-Richard, who proved himself lacking in respect and love for Henry. Furthermore, the allusion to Foliot incontrovertably puns on the word with the meaning of folly or foolishness; Henry's faithful follower is not being praised, he is being ridiculed by the Owl-Geoffrey, so neither reference offers much flattery to the patron as Russell conceives him. Nor does the name de Aquila seem relevant, since no eagle appears and Nicholas is never called by this family name. And finally, there are drawbacks to Russell's hypothesis that various subjects are touched on to please various portions of the audience. This may in part be true, but surely it is stretching a point to imply that rowdies would feel the poem more worth listening to because there are one line allusions to gaming and to the cock's ability to fight (1666, 1679). And would ‘the eulogy of married love and of the devoted wife’ (p. 184) really please a lay audience any more than a witty anti-feminist diatribe? Would references to married love really make any women in the audience feel better disposed toward the poem than they otherwise would have felt? Granting that medieval poets were not sensitive to what we think of as organic unity, these seem less satisfactory reasons for the poet's references to such subjects than we would like. In sum, I think Russell's attempt to find a historical context interesting, and quite original in his concern with the patron, but ultimately no more satisfactory than Baldwin's. In neither case do details, general interpretation, and possible rationale for the poem's form and composition so fit together that we come away with a firm sense that we know what the poem is.

Why have these attempts to read it as political allegory failed? Is it just that the right context has not yet been recognized, or are there more fundamental problems? The idea seems at least superficially plausible. After all, we do have political allegories cast in animal terms from a period not much later than the dates these critics have in mind.

I would like to suggest that it is this very animal form which is misleading to critics who seek historical contexts. Because animals are protagonists, we feel justified in trying political allegory, yet we might not do that so hastily if we considered the nature of the conflict. This poem has virtually no plot at all. Political allegories, though, are usually worked up as animal fables or stories. Characteristic of the fable is the straightforward tale and a clear, blunt moral which is meant to be relevant not just to King Noble and Renard, for instance, but to the human king and vassal who are analogous, and even to the general reader. Viewed in these terms, The Owl and the Nightingale suddenly looks rather less like the usual historical allegory. It has no story and no moral: even if a historical figure were to recognize himself in one of the birds, what would he learn? Their conflict is so indeterminate it tells us nothing. From the Nun's Priest's Tale, we can deduce basic lessons about pride, but even if we were to try, we would have trouble extracting any such tidy moral from The Owl and the Nightingale.

What then are we to make of the historical references in The Owl and the Nightingale? There do seem to be some allusions to historical events and personages—King Henry and (probably) Gilbert Foliot, a ruler neither ‘ded ne lame,’ a curious grouping of northern countries visited by a man from Rome—taken together, these look as if they ought to add up to something, but no satisfactory answer has emerged. With political allegory as with intellectual, correspondences between portions of the poem and extrinsic contexts are not hard to find, but one such partial congruence does not make the whole poem a vehicle for commentary on the subject unless much firmer proofs can be offered than already have been. Critical sanity demands that the whole poem be taken into account.

Another attempt to interpret the poem by tying it to a specific historical context deserves mention. A. C. Cawley (MLR [Modern Language Review] 1951), working with the passage on prophecy (1145-1330), concludes that the poem was written in connection with a conjunction of Saturn and Mars in Libra in 1186, and that the two birds may be viewed as roughly saturnian and venerian, as well as pro- and anti-astrology. He demonstrates that the misfortunes which the Owl predicts belong to the purview of Saturn and Mars, backing up his analysis with quotations from astrological treatises and with pleasingly apt lines from the Knight's Tale. Mars and Saturn are in conjunction in Libra approximately every thirty years, however, so we have no reason to consider 1186 a more likely date than the conjunctions of thirty or sixty years later, if Ker's redating of the C text is accepted. Also troublesome to this interpretation is the fact that most misfortunes, except those associated with love, are sponsored by these two malign planets, so any list of disasters may accidentally appear to have astrological significance.

The plausibility of Cawley's reading depends heavily upon the chroniclers' report that everybody knew of the conjunction and feared the disasters which were expected to attend it.¹⁶ Though these assertions obviously cannot be disproved, they must be questioned. Had astrologers really been concerned, we would expect more agreement on the nature of the event in the heavens. Roger of Hoveden's sources speak variously of a conjunction of all the planets, or of Mars and Saturn, while one of them, Pharamella of Cordova, actually denies that Mars and Saturn would indeed be in conjunction on the appointed day. Pharamella goes on to point out that if Mars and Saturn in Libra cause disasters, then such must occur at thirty year intervals, which, he points out, we know not to be the case. Roger of Hoveden's own approach to his material is worth noting. He cites his saracen and English authorities with great relish and in full detail under the year 1184 when writings on the event first appeared; his enthusiasm is that of a newsman delighted at being able to report so colourful an item as Corumphiza's gloomy forecast. Though he is always interested in climatic events, and reports several during 1185, he never mentions the conjunction and any disasters or lack thereof in 1186, when they were ‘expected’ to occur. Had the anticipatory panic he reports been widespread, we would expect reference to it, or to the relief following the passing of the fatal day. If we put these objections aside, we must still solve the problem of the function of all the non-astrological portions of the poem, and ask what we are meant to conclude about astrology from the debate. There is no intrinsic reason to discard Cawley's date of 1186 or shortly thereafter as impossible, but neither does it seem any sounder than 1174-5 (Baldwin), 1182-3 (Huganir), [or] December 1189 (Russell) …, all of whom work from ‘internal evidence.’

We can learn something about the problems of treating The Owl and the Nightingale as a political or historical allegory if we look at various famous clashes of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and see what they can tell us about The Owl and the Nightingale by contrast. The contestants who suggest themselves are the Popes and Emperors (or other lesser representatives of Church and State¹⁷) Henry II and Louis VII, Eleanor of Aquitaine and Louis VII, and Abelard and Bernard. Others would be possible—John and Stephen Langton or Henry III and Simon de Mountfort—but the four I have chosen cover a reasonable spread of types of conflict, and the last two would only be repetitions of the basic patterns present in these four or in Baldwin's and Russell's studies.

When we consider the struggles between empire and papacy, we would presumably link any chosen pope with the Owl because of her religiosity, and the appropriate emperor, willy-nilly, would be cast as Nightingale. But objections immediately spring to mind. There is nothing that would lead us to think of the Holy Roman Empire as the milieu, or of those men as the actors. The number of allusions to England and the North, and to English personages would tend to direct attention to those parts, even if we can only say that they indicate the author's milieu, not that of the allegory. But if the allegory were supposed to concern distant figures, we might expect a hint of local colour to orient us.

If we consider Louis VII's relations with Eleanor of Aquitaine (marital) or Henry II (martial), we find that a case could be made for either set of identifications. Louis was monkish and ascetic, and might seem a good referent for the Owl. Eleanor, the dashing young heiress of Aquitaine, might well have seemed like the Nightingale to some—partial to the south, and so scandalously concerned with love that, on a crusade to the Holy Lands, she was believed to be carrying on an affair with her own uncle. The Wren might be cast as Bernard of Clairvaux, who helped Louis annul the marriage. If one prefers to view the Nightingale as Henry II, the quarrel might in some way reflect the skirmishing warfare waged almost continuously between him and Louis. Perhaps the rally of small birds in support of the Nightingale about the Owl, with no definitive result, might be meant as a representation of the time Henry and his army had Louis bottled up in Toulouse (1159), but refused to take the city by storm because he did not wish to attack his feudal overlord directly, though Thomas Becket strenuously urged it. But anyone wishing to demolish these identifications can do so easily enough. The lack of plot seems ill-designed to reflect either quarrel, even if small portions of the text may seem to offer parallels to the historical situations.

The clash between Abelard and Bernard, although it suffers from most of these same drawbacks, is a more tempting analogy because it seems to agree even in minor details with the general antinomy of character. The Owl is monastic, probably white (i.e., Cistercian), austere, and very indignant at the Nightingale's powers of pleasing and seducing her auditors. The Nightingale, like Abelard, is highly welcome to most who hear her, but according to some (like the Owl and Bernard), her song is dangerous. Bernard thought Abelard's teachings dangerous intellectually and spiritually, for their point was not the urging of men to weep for their sins. Many of the charges linking the Nightingale's song to sin can be read allegorically in this light, but some can also be taken quite literally, for Abelard's affair with Heloise and its consequences were notorious. At the time of the affair, Abelard tells us, he wrote love songs which became immensely popular. Some of the Owl's gibes about the Nightingale's lust and interest in carnal matters might be construed as referring to Abelard's private life. The jealous knight who tried to prevent his lady from doing ‘An vnriȝt of hire licome’ (1054), and who inflicted an excessive punishment on the Nightingale resembles Canon Fulbert. The Nightingale's comment that a man who commits adultery may ‘forleose þat þer hongeþ’ (1485) seems tantalizingly allusive to Abelard's castration, though, of course, Abelard was not actually committing adultery, and the canon was no wronged husband. Furthermore, we know that the conflict between Abelard and Bernard was followed with interest by churchmen in England. Walter Map sketches a vivid little scene in which Thomas Becket and two Cistercian abbots discuss a letter written by Bernard to Pope Eugenius ranting against Abelard; Abelard had the sympathy of at least some of those present, for Map adds a scurrilous anecdote about Bernard immediately afterward. Map also describes the two Cistercians passing their news on to Gilbert Foliot.¹⁸ But, of course, the same objections apply here as elsewhere: the issues debated, the avian details, the astrology, and the actual stands on adultery remain unaccounted for. The house of cards climbs skyward promisingly—but collapses. It is easy to propose new contexts, and with the new dating of the C text some thirteenth century contexts are bound to be tried, but ultimately such endeavours are likely to be fruitless.

Before haring off after more contextual keys, we might pause to consider a basic question. What would the poem have to be like to make political or historical allegory more promising as a critical approach? First, we might expect some sort of story concerning the birds, unless the historical figures were actually famed for a debate. Whether they were known for debate or more active antagonism, we might expect the issues the birds quarrel over to bear some resemblance to those which engaged the human antagonists; the sources of friction might be couched in avian terms, but their relations to human concerns should be clear. Thus if the men were monarchs fighting over territory, we would expect territorial or jurisdictional claims to appear in the birds' arguments—disagreement over who had the right to gather bugs between the old oak and the river. An allegorical interpretation based on a historical clash would seem more plausible if the Nightingale's objections to the Owl were not to her looks, gloom, tolerance towards the north and winter and darkness, and later to the Owl's ability to prophesy.

The use of thinly disguised human institutions would also make a political interpretation more likely. In the stories about Renard, there is a King Noble, who has a castle, a feudal court, vassals, and the like. Such details of setting are very useful at the beginning of a tale if the audience is to recognize in the beasts the appropriate human analogues. In short, these would give us an appropriate general context to relate the story to, and such a clear-cut context for The Owl and the Nightingale is utterly lacking.

The great advantage to political allegory is the devastating clarity with which it can expose the folly or criminality of some public figure or faction. The Owl and the Nightingale lacks a readily ascertainable moral lesson, unless we are meant to conclude only that arguments between pig-headed opponents are not likely to reach productive conclusions; and even that does not really seem to be the moral, for the outcome is not utter stalemate—the birds agree to accept arbitration. This lack of message or commentary should weigh very heavily against political allegory as the key to The Owl and the Nightingale. Marvelous as it would be to find a historical context that would turn this baffling poem into a simple à clef matter, we ought to recognize that the poem lacks the usual earmarks of political allegory. It is cast in animal terms, but it does not have a clear context, a story with a definite outcome, or anything like the usual sort of moral. Yet these missing features are crucial to effective political allegory, and that being the case, we should realize how unlikely it is that The Owl and the Nightingale was written with that form in mind.

Notes

1. Albert C. Baugh, general editor and author of the Middle English portion, A Literary History of England, 2nd ed. (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts 1967) 155

2. Bernhard Ten Brink, Die Geschichten der englischen Litteratur, edited by Alois Brandl (Strassburg: 1899), p. 215; George Saintsbury, A Short History of English Literature (New York: Macmillan 1898) 60; W.P. Ker, Medieval English Literature (1912; reprint, London: Oxford University Press 1962) 135; Eric Gerald Stanley, ed. The Owl and the Nightingale (London: 1960), p. 22; and J. E. Wells, ed. The Owl and the Nightingale (Boston: and London: 1907, rev. 1908) p. xli.

3. The Owl's views on wives' adultery are not altogether in line with her austere characterization, although most readers welcome this lapse in logic for the humanity it signifies. If the Owl is meant to be a monk—and this is the most usual identification—we may be able to go further and call her a Cistercian. Hinckley (in PMLA [1932] 304) points out that we may deduce the Owl to be white from her disparagement of the Nightingale for her dusky coloration (577 ff.). But, of course, the birds accuse each other of faults they themselves share: the Nightingale, for example, loudly berates the Owl over her diet, only to be proven far from fastidious herself.

4. Their sex may reflect linguistic rather than physical gender, as seems to be the case with the falcon, so it is unsafe to base an interpretation on that characteristic.

5. Bertram Colgrave, ‘The Owl and the Nightingale and the “Good Man from Rome”’ ELN 4 (1966) 1-4; and A.C. Cawley, ‘Astrology in “The Owl and the Nightingale”’ MLR 46 (1951) 161-74. Richard E. Allen, in ‘The Voices of The Owl and the Nightingale’ (Studies in Medieval Culture 3 [1970] 52-8) supports Colgrave's musical interpretation throughout most of his argument, but suggests as a further possibility a connection to epic and romance.

6. J. W. H. Atkins, The Owl and the Nightingale: Edited with Introduction, Texts, Notes, Translation and Glossary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1922). Norway, for instance, was eventually to embrace courtly works, but the stirrings of interest in that sort of literature in the north are not documented until 1226 when King Hakon ordered translated the Tristram story and then Marie's lais.

7. Literature and Pulpit in Medieval England, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Basil Blackwell 1961) 22

8. D.W. Robertson's essay, only incidentally on The Owl and the Nightingale, is ‘Historical Criticism’ in English Institute Essays 1950, ed. Alan S. Downer (1951; reprint New York: AMS Press 1965) 3-31, especially pp. 23-6. Hässler's views are expressed in ‘The Owl and the Nightingale’ und die literarischen Bestrebungen des 12. und 13. Jahrhunderts (Frankfurt 1942?). Peterson's and Donovan's essays appeared simultaneously in 1956 in JEGP and MS respectively.

9. See Edward Billings Ham, Rutebeuf and Louis IX, University of North Carolina Studies in the Romance Languages and Literatures 42 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press 1962), a discussion and edition of Renart le Bestornei.

10. A History of Old French Literature (1936; rev. ed. New York: Russell and Russell 1962) 211

11. ‘Henry II and The Owl and the Nightingale’ JEGP 66 (1967) 207-29

12. Kathryn Huganir, The Owl and the Nightingale: Sources, Date, Author (Philadelphia 1931), p. 92, paraphrases the expression ‘dead or infirm’ (i.e., feeble, sick), which seems adequate but less exact than Baldwin's explanation.

13. ‘The Patrons of The Owl and the Nightingale’ PQ 48 (1969) 178-85

14. He adds the reservation (p. 181) that he does not wish to identify the men too closely with the birds. In effect, this frees him (without justification) from having to explain any details which do not quite fit his theory.

15. The seat of the de Aquila family, as he points out, is seven miles from Guildford, Surrey. Hence the alleged by-form ‘of Guildford.’

16. See Benedict of Peterborough's Gesta Regis Henrici Secundi, ed. William Stubbs, Rolls Series 49, I 324 ff., and Roger of Hoveden's Chronica, ed. William Stubbs, Rolls Series 51, II 290 ff.

17. Margaret Schlauch, in English Medieval Literature and its Social Foundations (Warsaw: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe 1956) 161, argues for a variant of church vs state: she identifies the Owl with the clergy in general, and the Nightingale with the nobility. As usual, this approach works in part, but not completely. The Nightingale's claims to religious worth, the material on prophecy, avian details, and the like do not fit the interpretation.

18. See Walter Map, De Nugis Curialium, ed. Montague Rhodes James, Anecdota Oxoniensia, mediaeval and modern series, part xiv (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1914) 38-9.