Michael J. Warren, Birds in Medieval English Poetry: Metaphors, Realities, Transformations. Woodbridge: D.S. Brewer, 2018, 259 pp.

Michael J. Warren has written an ecocritical, literary study of birds in medieval English poetry. He emphasizes the “real birds” evoked by literary representations. While he acknowledges the “metaphoric” category of birds, encompassing avian symbolism, allegory, and anthropomorphism in verse, he repeatedly returns to the real qualities of birds known in England and represented in selected poems, paying special attention to