The Owl and the Nightingale is a DEBATE POEM in
early MIDDLE ENGLISH, written in a southeastern
dialect in 1,794 lines of octosyllabic (eight-syllable) couplets. The poem survives in two late 13thcentury manuscripts, but was probably composed
in the late 12th or very early 13th century. In the
poem, the narrator overhears a comic debate between a serious Owl and a lively Nightingale over
the relative benefits each brings to mankind.
The date of the poem has been a matter of
some scholarly dispute. It appears, from a reference to the late “King Henry” in the text, that the
poem was written sometime between 1189, when
HENRY II died, and 1216, when Henry III succeeded to the throne—since had the poem been
written after 1216 it would have been necessary to
specify which King Henry was being referenced.
The authorship of the poem has also been debated. Because the poem ends with the argument
unresolved, and the two birds flying off to present
their case to one “Nicholas of Guildford” to judge,
some scholars have suggested that Nicholas was
himself the author. Nicholas is praised as an accomplished man in the poem, and it is possible
that he was a learned priest capable of writing a
poem such as The Owl and the Nightingale, full of
wit and learning. Other scholars suggest that
Nicholas was the poet’s patron, or that the poem
was presented to Nicholas by an anonymous clerical friend or, according to one author, by the nuns
of Shaftesbury Abbey. The question of the poem’s
authorship remains unsolved.
Many scholars have interpreted the poem as
ALLEGORY: The Owl and the Nightingale have been
seen as representing the worldly vs. the ascetic
life, or the minstrel vs. the preacher, or art vs. philosophy. Most often the birds have been seen as
spokespersons for love poetry and religious poetry. In the end such interpretations are unsatisfactory, since the birds’ argument extends to a
wide variety of topics that make all of these suggestions possible, but never focuses seriously on
any one of them. The birds discuss the characteristics of their respective species, they argue about
music, about papal missions, and about theological and philosophical questions like the necessity for confession, and man’s free will vs. God’s
foreknowledge. But what is ultimately most
memorable in the poem is the characterization
of the two protagonists.
The Owl is presented as self-important, melancholy, ascetic, and irascible; the Nightingale as optimistic, jovial, unreflective, and a bit shallow. The
two of them harangue one another about a variety
of topics in a haphazard manner, dealing with
them in a rather superficial way. They are more interested in either attacking one another (with
name-calling, innuendo, and lampoon) or exaggerated self-aggrandizement. Thus the Nightingale
berates the Owl for her ugliness, and the Owl retaliates by criticizing the Nightingale’s scrawniness.
The Nightingale compares the Owl to a lunatic,
and the Owl complains of the Nightingale’s “crazy
cacklings” in the forest. They accuse one another of
being unclean. The Owl denounces the Nightingale for having only one talent—singing—while
the Owl herself has many talents, including doing
the practical work of ridding barns of mice. This
last argument seems to impress the Nightingale.
The poet-narrator appears to favor the Owl’s
case, though that support is never explicit.
ever, since the tone of the poem is mildly satiric, it
may well be that the poet is simply, like the
Nightingale, comically impressed by the selfimportance of the Owl, who is herself a ludicrous
character because of her egotism and her blackand-white certainty of her own views. Ultimately
the poem seems chiefly a send-up of the very
human tendency to become contentious. The Owl
and the Nightingale is the first of what became a
popular subgenre in Middle English literature, the
bird-debate. Later poems like The THRUSH AND THE
NIGHTINGALE and John CLANVOWE’s Cuckoo and the
Nightingale, and perhaps even CHAUCER’s PARLIAMENT OF FOWLS, may owe their inspiration largely
to The Owl and the Nightingale.
Bibliography
Barratt, Alexandra.“Flying in the Face of Tradition: A
New View of The Owl and the Nightingale,” University of Toronto Quarterly 56 (1987): 471–485.
Cartlidge, Neil, “The Date of The Owl and the
Nightingale,” Medium Aevum 65 (1996): 230–247.
———, ed. The Owl and the Nightingale. Exeter,
U.K.: University of Exeter Press, 2001.
Cawley, A. C. “Astrology in The Owl and the Nightingale,” Modern Language Review 46 (1951):
161–174.
Coleman, Janet. “The Owl and the Nightingale and
Papal Theories of Marriage,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 38 (1987): 517–567.
Holsinger, Bruce. “Vernacular Legality: The English
Jurisdictions of The Owl and the Nightingale.” In
The Letter of the Law: Legal Practice and Literary
Production in Medieval England, edited by Emily
Steiner and Candace Barrington, 154–184. Ithaca,
N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2002.
Hume, Kathryn. The Owl and the Nightingale: The
Poem and Its Critics. Toronto: Toronto University
Press, 1975.
Jacobs, Nicolas.“The Owl and the Nightingale and the
Bishops.” In Medieval Literature and Antiquities:
Studies in Honour of Basil Cottle, edited by Myra
Stokes and T. L. Burton, 91–98. Cambridge: D. S.
Brewer, 1987.
Stone, Brian, trans. The Owl and the Nightingale,
Cleanness, St Erkenwald. 2nd ed. London: Penguin
Classics, 1988.