ABSTRACT
It requires some temerity to add another analysis of a very famous Middle English poem which has already been examined by so very many famous modern English scholars. It is a bit like adding one more word about Shakespeare, or about Chaucer. Consider, for a moment, the scholars who have examined this poem that A.C. Baugh calls “A truly amazing phenomenon,” and that others have termed “outstanding” or “remarkable.” The twelfth century may well have been happiest of centuries as far as the trivium was concerned. The authors happen to know a good deal about it from the writings of men like John of Salisbury, William Fitzstephen, Alexander Neckham, Hugh of Saint Victor, and even such adopted Englishmen as Peter of Blois. Perhaps the most significant passage in whole poem, from the dialectical-rhetorical point of view, is lines 659-706 in which the nightingale ponders her problem of replying to the owl's best speech in which eight arguments are laid out.
