From Monty Python’s Norwegian Blue to Captain Flint and his “pieces of eight”, the parrot has popped up with amazing regularity in novels, poems and comic sketches. With a mischievous gift for mimicking human speech, the parrot drives the plot in the work of writers as diverse as Ovid, Flaubert, Jean Rhys and Arthur Ransome. So how has the androgynous parrot assumed such a subversive place in literature?
Martha talks to Dr Julia Courtney and Dr Paula James of the Open University about the fictional adventures of the parrot.
The Role of the Parrot in Selected Texts from Ovid to Jean Rhys: Telling an Alternative Viewpoint edited by Julia Courtney and Paula James is published by Edwin Mellen Press Ltd, ISBN: 0773455744
