- The Oxford Handbook of British Poetry, 1660–1800
- List of Illustrations
- Notes on Contributors
- Introduction
- Poems on the Streets
- Poems on the Stage
- Poems in Print
- Poems in Magazines
- Poems in the Novel
- Poems in the Nursery
- Poems in the Lecture Hall
- The Poet as Clubman
- The Poet as Professional
- The Poet as Laborer
- The Poet as Teacher
- The Poet as Man of Feeling
- The Poet as Genius
- The Poet as Fraud
- The Poet as Poetess
- Poems on Poetry
- Poems on Politics
- Poems on Nation and Empire
- Poems on Science and Philosophy
- Poems on Place
- Poems on the Sexes
- Couplets
- Blank Verse
- Stanzas
- Free Verse and Prose Poetry
- Pastoral
- Georgic
- Epic
- Satire
- Ode
- Elegy
- Ballad
- Devotional Poetry
- Lyric
- Translation
- Imagery
- Metaphor
- Allusion
- Irony
- Scholarship
- Histories
- Reviews
- Honors
- Index
Abstract and Keywords
This chapter defines literary qualities of ballads, those sung narratives which are part of our anonymous literary heritage. The conventions of the genre are discussed, such as the imagery of ballads as well as their narrative structure, characters, diction, prosody, rhyme schemes, and modal melodies. Qualities associated with songs or stories transmitted orally, such as incremental repetition and formulaic epithets or descriptive commonplaces, are also discussed and examples are given. Some of the controversies about the origins and composition of ballads are sketched in, as well as a thumbnail history of when and how these popular narratives were first collected. Their prevalence in eighteenth-century British society is suggested. The subject matter of ballads is described and the plots of a number of typical ballads are given in brief.
Keywords: poetry, genre, ballads, popular poetry, folklore
Ruth Perry was past President of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, a founder of the Boston Graduate Consortium of Women’s Studies, and founding Director of the Women’s and Gender Studies program at MIT, where she is the Ann Fetter Friedlaender Professor of Humanities. Her most recent monograph is Novel Relations: The Transformation of Kinship in English Literature and Culture 1748–1818 (Cambridge Univ. Press) and her most recent edited volume an edition of Charlotte Lennox’s Henrietta (1758) co-edited with Susan Carlile for the University of Kentucky Press. She is writing a biography of Anna Gordon Brown, an eighteenth-century Scotswoman who preserved our finest ballads. She is herself a folksinger and teaches courses on folk music.
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- The Oxford Handbook of British Poetry, 1660–1800
- List of Illustrations
- Notes on Contributors
- Introduction
- Poems on the Streets
- Poems on the Stage
- Poems in Print
- Poems in Magazines
- Poems in the Novel
- Poems in the Nursery
- Poems in the Lecture Hall
- The Poet as Clubman
- The Poet as Professional
- The Poet as Laborer
- The Poet as Teacher
- The Poet as Man of Feeling
- The Poet as Genius
- The Poet as Fraud
- The Poet as Poetess
- Poems on Poetry
- Poems on Politics
- Poems on Nation and Empire
- Poems on Science and Philosophy
- Poems on Place
- Poems on the Sexes
- Couplets
- Blank Verse
- Stanzas
- Free Verse and Prose Poetry
- Pastoral
- Georgic
- Epic
- Satire
- Ode
- Elegy
- Ballad
- Devotional Poetry
- Lyric
- Translation
- Imagery
- Metaphor
- Allusion
- Irony
- Scholarship
- Histories
- Reviews
- Honors
- Index
