'Christian notes sound sweetest suffering': birds, books and textual circulation in Sir John Gibson's commonplace book (BL Add 37719)

• Published in: The Seventeenth century Vol. 39; no. 5; pp. 791 - 818
• Main Author: Chenovick, Clarissa
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Durham Routledge 02.09.2024; Taylor & Francis Ltd
• Subjects: 17th century; Birds; birdsong; Early modern period; early modern poetry; Historical text analysis; manuscript miscellanies; Poetry; Prison; Prisoners; voice
• ISSN: 0268-117X; 2050-4616
• DOI: 10.1080/0268117X.2024.2396876

A growing body of scholarship has worked to recover the vocal dimensions of early modern reading and the effects of aural reading cultures on literary composition. Where these studies have focused on the relationship between the human voice and early modern texts, this article examines how the seventeenth-century royalist prisoner Sir John Gibson deploys early modern ideas about birds and birdsong as he seeks consolation through the material and textual processes of literary composition, manuscript compilation, and epistolary exchange. These efforts are evident in his physical and imaginative construction of his miscellany (BL Add 37719) as possessing bird-like capacities for movement and communication. While Gibson's miscellany does draw on familiar seventeenth-century ideas about music and the human voice, I argue that his invocations of birds and birdsong produce intriguing and powerful claims for the ways written texts can extend the capabilities of the human voice and body.