This essay is about the Ballad, contrasting how the ballad went from an oral tradition to the ballad form known today. The Ballad can be any narrative song, but in technical terms a ballad is a specific literary form. The word ballad comes from the Latin and Italian word “ballare,” meaning “to dance”. Collins, (1985). The second word translation of “ballade” comes from the French language and means "dancing song". Oxford, (1995). Therefore a ballad is a song that tells a story, and was originally a musical accompaniment to a dance.
Ballads are very old and were handed down orally through generation to generation before they began to be written down. Because of this, most of the surviving ballads have been greatly adapted as they were passed around. However, traditional ballads do share some features. The ballad is a narrative poem of popular origin usually very long, epic in style. The language is simple and is not sentimental. The poem can be about a relationship or an experience, good, bad, triumphant, or tragic, set to music. Hubbell (1923). Ch 235.
Furthermore the structure and tone is made up of verses of four lines, with a rhyming pattern, repartition is often found in the ballad, entire stanzas can be repeated, like a chorus, or a repeated with certain words changed. The verse form, sometimes called the "ballad metre”. A question and answer can be built into the stanza and there is a lot of dialogue, with the action often described in the first person. Two characters can talk to one another in alternating lines or stanzas. Hubbell, (1923).ch,235.
The core structure for a ballad is a quatrain, written with either a-b-c-b, or a-b-a-b rhyme scheme. "a" stands for one line ending, "b" for another, and "c" for another s...
... middle of paper ...
.... 3rd Ed. The Norton Anthology of Poetry. W.W. Norton & company Ltd. London.
Bell, R. Ed. (1996). Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of the Peasantry of England 1550-1867. http://WWW.Gutenberg.org/ebooks/649. Accessed on 26/12/10
Eddy, S. Ed. (2009). Lyrical Ballads York advanced notes. York Press London.
Hubbell, J.B. (1923). An introduction to poetry. The Macmillan company Ltd, London Attained on the kindle HTTP://www.amazon.co.uk/an introduction to poetry. Accessed on the 19/12/10.
Mcleod, T. P. Hanks. Eds (1985). Collins Concise English Dictionary. Guild Publishing, London.
Palmer, R. (1979). A Ballad History of England from 1588 to present day. The Anchor Press Ltd, Tiptree.
Phythian, B.A. (1978). Considering Poetry An Approach to Criticism. Hodder & Stoughton Educational. Sevenoaks.
Randall, D. Ed. (1971). The Black Poets. Bantam Books. New York.
Each stanza is composed of words that present a logical flow of growth through the entire poem. The words in the poem do not rhyme and the lines are different lengths.
Sargent, Michael G. “Mystical Writings and Dramatic Texts in Late Medieval England.” Religion & Literature , Vol. 37, No. 2 (Summer, 2005), pp. 77-98
ballads and poems, a few have risen to the fore front of the genre as an
Raffel, Burton. and Alexandra H. Olsen Poems and Prose from the Old English, (Yale University Press)Robert Bjork and John Niles,
tells us a story and has a regular rhyme scheme, it is a narrative and
Meinke, Peter. “Untitled” Poetry: An Introduction. Ed. Michael Meyer. 6th ed. Boston: Bedford/ St. Martin’s 2010. 89. Print
A metrical composition; a composition in verse written in certain measures, whether in blank verse or in rhyme, and characterized by imagination and poetic diction; contradistinguished from prose; as, the poems of Homer or of Milton. This is but one of Webster 's definitions of a poem. Using this definition of “poem,” this paper will compare and contrast three different poems written by three different poets; William Shakespeare 's Sonnets 116, George Herbert’s Easter Wings and Sir Thomas Wyatt’s Whoso List to Hunt.
McDonnell, Helen, Neil E. Nakadate, John Pfordresher, and Thomas E. Shoemate. ENGLAND in Literature. Medallion ed. N.p.: Scott, Foresman and Company, 1990. 69-80. Print.
Shields, David S. Oracles of Empire: Poetry, Politics, and Commerce in British America, 1690-1750. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990
Stebbins, Todd. Stebbins, Todd. "Mcculler's THE BALLAD OF THE SAD CAFE." Explicator 46.2 (1988): 36-38. Academic Search Complete. Web. 16 Mar. 2014. Analyzing the harmony in The Ballad of the Sad Cafe
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.
Leeming, David Adams. “The Anglo Saxons.” Elements of Literature, Sixth Course: Literature of Britain. Ed. Kristine E. Marshall. 1997. 10. Print.
The faded voices of choir singers are muffled by a roaring explosion. The sounds from the crumbling building spread down the block. Worn-down bricks, knocked out from underneath each another. Shards of colored glass, shot into the air. Chucks of wood and rubbish litter the sidewalk. Thick smoke and fearful screams saturate the air. A mother’s worse nightmare.
In relation to structure and style, the poem contains six stanzas of varying lengths. The first, second, and fourth stanzas
Colvile, Derek. Victorian Poetry and the Romantic Religion. Albany, NY: State University of New York, 1970. 34-42.