Notes taken from The Norton Anthology of English Literature (10) Popular ballads

 

Popular ballads:

 

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  • nature of the ballads: anonymous narrative songs preserved by oral transmission
  • their origin: primitive societies

 

  • the main purposes: songs for ritual dances( not plausible), because of their unconscious or conscious revisions
  • date of the English ballads’ composition: from 1200 to 1700
  • Bishop Thomas Percy's role: he found a 17th Century manuscript and became interested in ballads
  • his work: Reliques of Ancient English Poetry
  • the role of his work: inspiring Sir Walter Scott
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  • ballads composed by people not by a particular person: because work of a consciously artistic mind doesn't need revision
  • common features of popular ballads: spareness / culminating incident or climax of a plot / intense compression / narrating through allusive monologue or dialogue
  • their artistic stature: gained through revising and removing the irrelevant part

 

  • their distinctive verse form: simplicity of the tunes / a quatrain with four stresses per line / choral practice of using refrains and other kinds of repetitions  / a foreknown or foredoomed paradoxical conclusion /
  • role of  repetition and refrain: providing a very primitive and effective suspense / incantation of ritual of liturgy

 

  • the dominant subject or motifs of most best ballads: a tragic incident
  • Names of  some famous ballads: Lord Randall   /  Sir Patrick Spen
  • a ballad  with a happy ending: Thomas Rhymer based on a romance or an old ballad

 

  • the origin of Sir Patrick Spens: based on a historical incident of the end of the 13th century:  like some other ballads actual historical incidents
  • deficiencies of the quasi-historical Robin Hood ballads: less impressive / without undergoing through the stages of oral transmission  / lacking the appropriate intensity /  chattiness / work of the minstrels to please his admirers /
  • the theme of the Robin Hood ballads: in natural freedom loving-man against tyrants
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  • composer of St. Steven and King Herod:   a learned cleric using Latin words undergoing a single stage of composition
  • the great collection of English ballads: F. J. Child's The English and Scottish Popular Ballads
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