A melodious paean to the natural history and symbolic meaning of the most prized, poetized, and mythologized of songbirds.
The nightingale has a unique place in cultural history: the most prized of songbirds, it has inspired more poems than any other creature, and it is also the most mythologized of birds. Nightingale juxtaposes the bird of poetry, music, myth, and lore with the living bird of wood and scrubland, unpicking the entangled relationship between them. Covering a huge range of poets, musicians, artists, nature writers, and natural historians-from Aristotle, Keats, and Vera Lynn to Bob Dylan-Nightingale charts our fascination through history with this nondescript yet melodious little brown bird. It also documents the nightingale's disappearance from British breeding grounds and the implications this has for nightingale conservation.
- ISBN10 1789144744
- ISBN13 9781789144741
- Publish Date 11 October 2021
- Publish Status Active
- Out of Print 28 November 2023
- Publish Country GB
- Imprint Reaktion Books
- Format Paperback (US Trade)
- Pages 224
- Language English