ABSTRACT
The Owl and the Nightingale is a typical product of the intellectual renaissance of the twelfth century. The two argumentative birds in the poem sound remarkably like the London schoolboys of that era, who, according to William FitzStephen (d. 1190), delighted in debating:
Some engage in disputation for display …, others for truth. … In epigrams, rimes, and verses … they pull their comrades to pieces without mentioning names; they fling at them scoffs and sarcasms; they touch the failings of their schoolmates or even of greater people with Socratic salt.
