Editing Philomela (section)

===From antiquity and the influence of Ovid===
[[File:Philomela Procne preparing to kill Itys.jpg|thumb|upright=1.4|Attic wine cup, circa 490 BC, depicting Philomela and Procne preparing to kill Itys. (Louvre, Paris)]]
Beginning with [[Homer]]'s ''[[Odyssey]]'',<ref>Homer. ''The Odyssey'' Book XIX, lines 518–523.</ref> ancient dramatists and poets evoked the story of Philomela and the nightingale in their works.<ref name="ChandlerPoetry" /> Most notably, it was the core of the tragedy ''[[Tereus (Sophocles)|Tereus]]'' by [[Sophocles]] (lost, extant only in fragments) and later in a set of plays by [[Philocles]], the nephew of the great playwright [[Aeschylus]]. In Aeschylus's ''[[Agamemnon (play)|Agamemnon]]'', the prophetess [[Cassandra]] has a visionary premonition of her own death in which she mentioned the nightingale and Itys, lamenting:
<blockquote><poem>
Ah for thy fate, O shrill-voiced nightingale!
Some solace for thy woes did Heaven afford,
Clothed thee with soft brown plumes, and life apart from wail(ing)—<ref>Aeschylus, ''Agamemnon'' (found online [http://www.greektexts.com/library/Aeschylus/Agamemnon/eng/print/25.html here] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081122152327/http://www.greektexts.com/library/Aeschylus/Agamemnon/eng/print/25.html |date=22 November 2008 }}). (Retrieved 23 November 2012).</ref>
</poem></blockquote>

In his ''[[Poetics (Aristotle)|Poetics]]'', [[Aristotle]] points to the "voice of the shuttle" in [[Sophocles]]′ tragedy ''Tereus'' as an example of a poetic device that aids in the "recognition"—the change from ignorance to knowledge—of what has happened earlier in the plot. Such a device, according to Aristotle, is ″contrived″ by the poet, and thus is "inartistic".<ref>Aristotle, [[Poetics (Aristotle)|Poetics]], 54b.</ref> The connection between the nightingale's song and poetry is evoked by [[Aristophanes]] in his comedy ''[[The Birds (play)|The Birds]]'' and in the poetry of [[Callimachus]]. Roman poet [[Virgil]] compares the mourning of [[Orpheus]] for [[Eurydice]] to the "lament of the nightingale".<ref>Doggett, Frank. "Romanticism's Singing Bird" in ''SEL: Studies in English Literature 1500–1900'' XIV:4:568 (Houston, Texas: Rice University, 1974) {{jstor|449753}}</ref>

While Ovid's retelling of the myth is the more famous version of the story, he had several ancient sources on which to rely before he finished the ''Metamorphoses'' in A.D. 8.<ref name="FrazerBiblioNote2" /> Many of these sources were doubtless available to Ovid during his lifetime but have been lost or come to us at present only in fragments. In his version, Ovid recast and combined many elements from these ancient sources. Because his is the most complete, lasting version of the myth, it is the basis for many later works.

In the 12th century, French [[trouvère]] (troubadour) [[Chrétien de Troyes]]<!-- it's still under debate if Chrétien was truly the author of Philomela, this should be noted. Here the reference, one of many possible ones: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/831/831-h/831-h.htm -->, adapted many of the myths recounted in Ovid's ''Metamorphoses'' into [[Old French]]. However, de Troyes was not alone in adapting Ovid's material. [[Geoffrey Chaucer]] recounted the story in his unfinished work ''[[The Legend of Good Women]]''<ref>Gila Aloni, "Palimpsestic Philomela: Reinscription in Chaucer's 'Legend of Good Women'", in ''Palimpsests and the Literary Imagination of Medieval England'', eds. {{ill|Leo Carruthers|fr}}, Raeleen Chai-Elsholz, Tatjana Silec. New York: Palgrave, 2011. 157–173.</ref> and briefly alluded to the myth in his epic poem ''[[Troilus and Criseyde]]''.<ref>Chaucer, Geoffrey. ''Troilus and Criseyde'' Book II, lines 64–70.</ref> [[John Gower]] included the tale in his ''[[Confessio Amantis]]''.<ref>Gower, John. ''Confessio Amantis'' Book VIII, lines 5545–6075.</ref> References to Philomela are common in the [[motet]]s of the [[ars nova]], [[ars subtilior]], and ars mutandi musical eras of the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries.<ref>[[Elizabeth Eva Leach]], ''Sung Birds: Music, Nature, and Poetry in the Later Middle Ages'' (Ithaca, New York: Cornell, 2006)</ref>