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Chapter 4 - ‘Undersong’

John Clare

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 September 2022

Francesca Mackenney
Affiliation:
University of Leeds
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Summary

John Clare’s transcription of the nightingale’s song has been praised as ‘the most accurate rendering in words of any bird’s voice for nearly a century’. But the so-called ‘peasant poet’ was not naïve. Chapter four argues that Clare’s educational background and multifarious interests in poetry, science and natural history made him singly alert to the difficulties inherent within his own attempt to ‘syllable the sounds’ of the nightingale. The chapter places Clare’s writing in a pivotal, though pre-Darwinian, stage of the ‘science of birdsong’: a period in which all kinds of ‘facts’ about birdsong were being collected, compared and vigorously disputed. Watching the bird closely as it inwardly mutters its undersong, or stammers or hurries over ill-remembered passages, Clare witnessed the kind of behaviour which would ultimately challenge the ‘foolish lyes’ uttered by both poets and philosophers regarding how and why birds sing. By exploring the deep connections which Clare draws between the ‘muttering’ of the bird while practising its songs and his own processes of composition, the chapter seeks to challenge and break down some of the binary distinctions which have framed responses to the writings of this so-called ‘peasant-poet’: ‘natural’ and ‘artificial’, ‘instinctive’ and ‘learned’, ‘spontaneous’ and ‘premeditated’ art.

Type
Chapter
Information
Birdsong, Speech and Poetry
The Art of Composition in the Long Nineteenth Century
, pp. 101 - 136
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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  • ‘Undersong’
  • Francesca Mackenney, University of Leeds
  • Book: Birdsong, Speech and Poetry
  • Online publication: 15 September 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009075909.005
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  • ‘Undersong’
  • Francesca Mackenney, University of Leeds
  • Book: Birdsong, Speech and Poetry
  • Online publication: 15 September 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009075909.005
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • ‘Undersong’
  • Francesca Mackenney, University of Leeds
  • Book: Birdsong, Speech and Poetry
  • Online publication: 15 September 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009075909.005
Available formats
×