Recently, the term ‘ballad’ can be associated with everything from Solomon’s Song to an Aerosmith song. The dictionary defines it as a traditional story in song or a simple song. However, the medieval ballad is something of a different nature than that of the popular musical ballads of today.
The definition of ballad in the medieval context is a narrative poem. The authors usually remain anonymous and the ballad is more often than not accompanied by dance (Gummere). This is not surprising considering the word ‘ballad’ comes from the Latin word ‘ballare,’ meaning ‘to dance’ (Dixon). Almost all ballads follow the same distinct criteria. They are all performed by a minstrel or troubadour complemented by music and are normally performed for an audience. All ballads tell a story with major themes of revenge, envy, betrayal, loyalty, and superstition, although they may touch on other subjects. These stories only focus on one major event and can be about the dramatic events of heroes or every day people. Though the bulk of the stories begin in the middle of an event, there is very little background information given (Knight). Characters rarely show any development and most stories lack detail.
It is also important to know that there are there are three types of ballads: traditional ballads, broadside ballads and literary ballads (Dixon). Traditional ballads originated from ‘folk tales’ or other anecdotes told by peasants in England. These were most commonly passed by oral tradition. The broadside ballad is the traditional ballad’s cousin in many ways. These ballads were more common in urban or city like areas in the 16th century and were more likely to be printed and handed out instead of performed. The literary ballad is a combination of both the traditional and broadside types. These ballads appeared in the 18th century when ballads began to be published (Gummere). Medieval ballads, of course, are in the category of traditional ballads.
When studying medieval ballads, it is important to remember that the entertainment in the medieval period did not include television or computers. Medieval ballads were very lengthy to capture people’s attention for long periods of time. This is how the stories were passed from one generation to the next. The passing of ballads orally was the most popular. Francis James Child was the first to put together a collection of over 300 ballads (Child). The only ballads that can be traced are those, which have been written.
lust. To his Coy Mistress is a pure lust one even though in parts may
Those who told stories in the Middle Ages have been called by many names: minstrel, jongleur, troubadour, trouvère, bard, scôp, gleeman. But what more do we know of those performers of the Middle Ages, and more specifically those of Medieval France? The easy answer is not a lot. However, if we delve deeper into what artefacts remain of medieval society, we are able to fill in the gaps of our knowledge of these integral parts of medieval culture. My goal in this paper is to analyse the presence of the jongleur in a number of texts and images and to look at the inherent difficulties in determining their role both in contemporary medieval society and within the stories they told.
Very different from traditional writings of the past was the new flourish of troubadour poetry. Troubadour poetry, derived of courtly romances, focused on the idea of unrequited love. “A young man of the knightly class loved a lady”, most often, “the lady was married to the young man’s lord”. The courtly lover would compose highly lyrical and erotic poems in honor of his lady, and the troubadour was filled with rapture even at the slightest kindness that the lady might offer him.3 This new literary artifice provides us clues to the cultural changes that took place in medieval Europe during this time.
Lyrical Ballads were written in a time of great change. They were dominated by the French Revolution and both Wordsworth and Coleridge felt great impact from this. There was disruption all over with the American War of Independence and other wars worldwide. Britain itself was changing rapidly due to colonial expansion, which brought new wealth, ideas and fashion, and there was much disturbance to both the people and the land with the act of enclosure, which may have meant more effective farming but less work. The introduction of the Poor Laws meant that landowners paid their remaining staff very little knowing that they would be supplemented by poor relief. However the conditions stated by the Laws before aid would be given were very similar to ?The Last Of The Flock? with people having to give up every means of self support and therefore reduce the chance of them ever living independently again. The Industrial Revolution introduced the new ?middle? class for which many of these poems were written for. They use simple language to allow them to understand and self educate, which many of them were very interested in doing and bettering themselves, much like Wordsworth himself and his sister as shown in ?Tintern Abbey?. Here he talks of her being at the stage of education that he was five years before when he last visited.
Writing the poem in ballad form gave a sense of mood to each paragraph. The poem starts out with an eager little girl wanting to march for freedom. The mother explains how treacherous the march could become showing her fear for her daughters life. The mood swings back and forth until finally the mother's fear overcomes the child's desire and the child is sent to church where it will be safe. The tempo seems to pick up in the last couple of paragraphs to emphasize the mothers distraught on hearing the explosion and finding her child's shoe.
A monopoly is a market structure in which there is only one producer/seller for a product or service. In other words, the single business is the industry. That individual producer/seller has the power to influence the market prices and decisions. In a very extreme case, a monopolist could be the only owner and seller of a product or service in an industry. A monopoly has an enormous amount of buyers and it has no big competitors what so ever. This is because it has the power to destroy competition. A monopoly controls the prices of the goods and is the price maker as well. Unlike in a perfect competitive market, consumers/customers in a monopolistic market do not have perfect information on the products or services they buy. Consumers have limited choices and have to choose from what it is supplied. The monopolist asserts all the power while the consumers are left with no choice. For example: Imagine if Comcast was the only mass-media company that was able to supply cable TV. If anybody would want to watch TV, they would need to purchase Comcast’s cable service at any given price, as it would be the only cable TV provider.
An oligopoly is defined as "a market structure in which only a few sellers offer similar or identical products" (Gans, King and Mankiw 1999, pp.-334). Since there are only a few sellers, the actions of any one firm in an oligopolistic market can have a large impact on the profits of all the other firms. Due to this, all the firms in an oligopolistic market are interdependent on one another. This relationship between the few sellers is what differentiates oligopolies from perfect competition and monopolies. Although firms in oligopolies have competitors, they do not face so much competition that they are price takers (as in perfect competition). Hence, they retain substantial control over the price they charge for their goods (characteristic of monopolies).
A perfect competition and a monopoly are two very different and unique market structures. Under monopolies firms get normal profits only in the short period, but disappears in the long run. Monopolies come with strong barriers to enter and exit the market. Under a monopoly, a monopolist can charge different prices and no one can complain because everything is being ran by one big business. In a monopoly the average revenue curve slopes downward, and the demand curve is very inelastic. Both monopolies and perfect competitions want to maximize profits, although monopolistic prices are usually higher. A pure monopoly is rare like a perfectly competitive market, but there are elements of monopolies in some markets. In this paper I will go into detail about both of these markets.
Randall, Dudley. "Ballad of Birmingham." 1894. Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing. By X.J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. 6th ed. Boston: Longman, 2010. 526-27. Print. Compact Edition.
3) Sacred songs - Hungarian sacred folk hymns of a variety of origins also make up a wide repertoire of songs present in live folk tradition. The valuable and most significant part of church songs in folk tradition is ecumenical - ignoring the different type of denominations (that is Evangelic, Catholic, Reformational). We find songs with a) Gregorian origin (Psalmtones, Te Deum, Hymns - sometimes sung in Latin, even funeral parodies); b) songs evolved from medieval canticles; c) songs of the Reformation era; d) the psalms of Genf and other metric songs; d) 16th, 17th century Hungarian Chorals) songs of Counter-reformation f) sacred gongs set on peasant tunes.
Beowulf is the conventional title of an Old English epic poem consisting of 3182 alliterative long lines, set in Scandinavia, commonly cited as one of the most important works of Anglo-Saxon literature due to the fact that it is the oldest surviving epic poem of Old English and also the earliest vernacular English literature. Tragedy and epic have been much discussed as separate genres, but critics have not hesitated to designate certain characters and events in epics as tragic. For the most part, they have assumed or asserted an identity between epic and dramatic tragedy. Even in The Odyssey, Penelope and Telemachus suffer enough to rouse their deep passions and to force them like the tragic sufferer to consider their own predicaments in the world they live in. C.L. Wrenn wrote on Beowulf, “A Germanic hero is a tragic hero, who shows his highest greatness not alone in winning glory by victory, but rather by finding his supremely noble qualities especially in the moment of death in battle” (Wrenn 91). Beowulfs hubris, the representation of wealth as a profiling characteristic for the villages, and Beowulf’s ability to find his might in his moment of “death,” all show the very nature of the poem which defines it as not only an epic poem, but also a tragic one.
Pushing tears from her eyes, a frantic mother scrambles through what remains of her beloved church. But she does not locate her choir singer. Only a little white shoe and a glove to match. In his poem “Ballad of Birmingham,” David Randall uses descriptive imagery, dialogue, irony, and a tonal shift to give the poem emotion and draw the reader’s attention towards the dramatic situation.
Beowulf is an epic and Robin Hood is a ballad. An epic is much longer than a ballad, and it depicts the heroic acts of the main character. Beowulf is about the main character, Beowulf, defeating a multitude of monsters and saving the Hero. A ballad of the other hand, is divided into short stanzas, has a slant rhyme scheme, and is meant to be sung. The rhyme scheme in Robin Hood is evident in every stanza, every second and fourth line rhymes. For example line 6 says “all under the greenwood tree,” and line 8 says “as fine as fine might
Following the history of the era in literature, many authors were fascinated by the courtly tradition, chivalry and a higher love. Therefore, we have today musical compositions that speak of many of the same ideas. French composers wrote songs in the vernacular called chansons de geste . These songs spoke of the heroic acts performed by knights for their ladies in the name of love. The French have a national epic called the Chanson de Roland which related the life and death of Charlemagne’s nephew and his endeavor to rid France of the Basques.
The Perceived Demand Curve for a Perfect Competitor and Monopolist (Principle of Microeconomics, 2016). A perfectly competitive firm (a) has multiple firms competing against it, making the same product. Therefore the market sets the equilibrium price and the firm must accept it. The firm can produce as many products as it can afford to at the equilibrium price. However, a monopolist firm (b) can either cut or raise production to influence the price of their products or service. Therefore, giving it the ability to make substantial products at the cost of the consumers. However, not all monopolies are bad and some are even supported by the