Honegger

From Phoenix to Chaunticleer: Medieval English Animal Poetry Swiss Studies in English

1996Best.-Nr. 12708Hardcover x 288 pages NOT ex-library. An external stamp on lower outer page edges. Interior is clean untanned with unmarked text free of inscriptions and stamps firmly bound. Slightly dusty outer page edges. Faint dark handling marks and tiny corner creases on the boards. Issued without a dust jacket. -- This scholarly study provides a rigorous historical and generic analysis of the "animal poem" in the English vernacular tracing its development from the early Middle Ages to the 14th century. Honegger organises the vast corpus of medieval animal literature into three distinct evolutionary branches: the Physiologus Tradition the Bird Poems debate poetry and the Beast Fable and Epic. The narrative begins with the Old English Phoenix and the religious encyclopaedias of the Physiologus where animals served as static didactic ciphers for Christian truths. The analysis then moves into the more sophisticated Middle English "debate" genre offering a comparative study of the various Nightingale poems - specifically their encounters with the Owl the Thrush and the Cuckoo - before culminating in the courtly irony of Chaucer's Parlement of Foulys. In these texts Honegger argues that the animal shifts from a divine symbol to a mouthpiece for human social and philosophical conflict. The study reaches its conclusion by examining the Beast Epic tradition notably The Vox and the Wolf and the Nun's Priest's Tale where characters like Chaunticleer represent the pinnacle of medieval animal characterisation. By synthesizing these three traditions into a final "Integrated Overview" Honegger demonstrates how the animal figure evolved from a tool of moral instruction into a vehicle for sophisticated satire and human self-reflection. This volume remains an essential reference for researchers in Middle English philology beast fables and the historical development of animal studies. -- Table of Contents: I. Introduction 1. Aim Scope and Methods 2. Historical Background; II. The Physiologus Tradition 1. Introduction 2. The Old English Physiologus 3. The Old English Phoenix 4. The Middle English Physiologus; III. The 'Bird Poems' 1. Introduction 2. The Owl and the Nightingale 3. The Thrush and the Nightingale 4. The Cuckoo and the Nightingale 5. The Parlement of Foulys; IV. The Beast Fable and the Beast Epic Traditions 1. Introduction 2. The Vox and the Wolf 3. The Nun's Priest's Tale; V. Conclusion 1. The Three Traditions: a Summary 2. The Three Traditions after 1400 3. Integrated Overview of Medieval English Vernacular 'Animal Literature'; Bibliography; Index. Francke hardcover

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