Editing Philomela (section)

===In Classical and Romantic works===
[[File:Tereo.jpg|thumb|upright=1.4|''Tereus Confronted with the Head of his Son Itylus'' (oil on canvas, painted 1636–1638), one of the late works of Flemish Baroque painter Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) (Prado, Madrid)]]
Poets in the [[Romanticism|Romantic Era]] recast the myth and adapted the image of the nightingale with its song to be a poet and "master of a superior art that could inspire the human poet".<ref>Shippey, Thomas. "Listening to the Nightingale" in ''Comparative Literature'' XXII:1 (1970), pp. 46–60 {{jstor|1769299}} – retrieved 24 November 2012).</ref><ref>Doggett, Frank. "Romanticism's Singing Bird" in ''SEL: Studies in English Literature 1500–1900'' XIV:4 (1974), 570 {{jstor|449753}}– retrieved 24 November 2012).</ref> For some romantic poets, the nightingale even began to take on qualities of the muse. [[John Keats]] (1795–1821), in "[[Ode to a Nightingale]]" (1819) idealizes the nightingale as a poet who has achieved the poetry that Keats himself longs to write. Keats directly employs the Philomel myth in "[[The Eve of St. Agnes]]" (1820) where the rape of Madeline by Porphyro mirrors the rape of Philomela by Tereus.<ref name="FieldsKeatsTongueless" /> Keats' contemporary, poet [[Percy Bysshe Shelley]] (1792–1822) invoked a similar image of the nightingale, writing in his ''[[A Defence of Poetry]]'' that "a poet is a nightingale who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds; his auditors are as men entranced by the melody of an unseen musician, who feel that they are moved and softened, yet know not whence or why."<ref>Shelley, Percy Bysshe. ''A Defense of Poetry'' (Boston: Ginn & Company, 1903), p. 11.</ref>

In France, ''[[Philomèle]]'' was an [[French opera|operatic]] stage production of the story, produced by [[Louis Lacoste (composer)|Louis Lacoste]] during the reign of [[Louis XIV]].

First published in the collection ''Lyrical Ballads'', "The Nightingale" (1798) is an effort by [[Samuel Taylor Coleridge]] (1772–1834) to move away from associations that the nightingale's song was one of melancholy and identified it with the joyous experience of nature. He remarked that "in nature there is nothing melancholy", (line 15) expressing hope "we may not thus profane / Nature's sweet voices, always full of love / And joyance!" (lines 40–42).<ref>Ashton, Rosemary. ''The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge''. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), pp. 136–139; Mays, J. C. C. (editor). ''The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Poetical Works I'' (Volume I, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), p. 518.</ref>

At the poem's conclusion, Coleridge writes of a father taking his crying son outside in the night:
<blockquote><poem>
And he beheld the moon, and, hushed at once,
Suspends his sobs, and laughs most silently,
While his fair eyes, that swam with undropped tears,'
Did glitter in the yellow moon-beam! Well!—
It is a father's tale: But if that Heaven
Should give me life, his childhood shall grow up
Familiar with these songs, that with the night
He may associate joy.—<ref>Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. "Philomela" (1798), lines 102–109 in Volume I of ''Lyrical Ballads with a few other poems'' (with William Wordsworth) (London: J. & A. Arch, 1798)</ref>
</poem></blockquote>
Coleridge and his friend [[William Wordsworth]] (1770–1850), who called the nightingale a "fiery heart",<ref>Wordsworth, William. "O Nightingale, thou surely art" (1807), line 2.</ref> depicted it "as an instance of natural poetic creation", and the "voice of nature".<ref>Rana, Sujata; Dhankhar, Pooja. [http://www.languageinindia.com/dec2011/sujatabirdimagery.pdf "Bird Imagery in Keats's 'Ode to a Nightingale' and Yeats's 'The Wild Swans at Coole': A Comparative Study"] in ''Language in India'', vol. 11 (12 December 2011).</ref>

Other notable mentions include:
*In [[William Makepeace Thackeray]]'s 1847–1848 [[serial novel|serial]] ''[[Vanity Fair (novel)|Vanity Fair]]'', [[Becky Sharp (character)|Becky Sharp]] performs [[charades]] of [[Clytemnestra]] (kingslayer) and Philomela (the ravished mute of king, who prompted his slaying) before the [[George IV|Prince Regent]] of [[Kingdom of England|England]]. Further, her performance of Philomela is styled after [[Philomèle|the play]] from the era of [[Louis XIV]], alluding to the possibility of her becoming another [[Marquise de Maintenon]].
*In the poem "Philomela" (1853) by English poet [[Matthew Arnold]] (1822–1888), the poet asks upon hearing the crying of a fleeing nightingale if it can find peace and healing in the English countryside far away from Greece, although lamenting its pain and passion "eternal".
*In his 1881 poem "[[s:The Burden of Itys|The Burden of Itys]]", [[Oscar Wilde]] describes Itys as the symbol of Greek art and pleasure is contrasted with Christ. The landscape of Greece is also compared to the landscape of England, specifically Kent and Oxford. 
*[[Algernon Charles Swinburne]] (1837–1909) wrote a poem called "Itylus" based on the story in which Philomela and Procne, after being transformed into the nightingale and swallow, ask when they will be able to forget the grief of having slain Itylus—the answer being they will forget when the world ends. He also wrote the lyrical tragedy ''Erechtheus'' (1876) which concerns Philomela's brother.
*English poet [[Ann Yearsley]] (1753–1806) in lamenting the sufferings of African slaves invokes the myth and challenges that her song "''shall teach sad Philomel a louder note,''" in her abolitionist poem "A Poem on the Inhumanity of the Slave-Trade" (1788)<ref>Yearsley, Ann. "A Poem on the Inhumanity of the Slave-Trade" (1788) lines 45–46.</ref>
*In "A la Juventud Filipina", Filipino national hero [[José Rizal]] (1861–1896), used the image of Philomel as inspiration for young Filipinos to use their voices to speak of Spanish injustice and colonial oppression.<ref>Zaide, Gregorio. ''Jose Rizal: Life, Works, and Writings of a Genius, Writer, Scientist, and National Hero'' (Manila, Philippines: All Nations Publishing Co., 1994).</ref>