Faculty of Arts,
Chulalongkorn University
Ballad
Definitions
- ballad (Merriam-Webster)
1 a: a narrative composition in
rhythmic verse suitable for singing b:
an art song accompanying a traditional ballad
2: a simple song: air
3: a popular song;
especially: a slow romantic or sentimental song
- ballad (Oxford
Dictionaries)
1 A poem or song narrating a
story in short stanzas. Traditional ballads are typically of unknown
authorship, having been passed on orally from one generation to the
next.
2 A slow sentimental or romantic
song.
- ballad (Chris Baldick, The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms,
32)
A folk song or orally transmitted poem telling in a direct and dramatic
manner some popular story usually derived from a tragic incident in
local history or legend. The story is told simply, impersonally, and
often with vivid dialogue. Ballads are normally composed in quatrains
with alternating four-stress and three-stress lines, the second and
fourth lines rhyming; but some ballads are in couplet form, and some
others have six-line stanzas. Appearing in many parts of Europe in the
late Middle Ages, ballads flourished particularly strongly in Scotland
from the 15th century onward. Since the 18th century, educated poets
outside the folk-song tradition—notably Coleridge and Goethe—have
written imitations of the popular ballad's form and style: Coleridge's 'Rime
of the Ancient Mariner' (1798) is a celebrated example.
- ballad (M. H. Abrams and Geoffrey Harpham, A Glossary of Literary Terms,
25)
A short definition of the popular ballad (also called the folk ballad or
traditional ballad) is that it is a song, transmitted orally, which
tells a story. Ballads are thus the narrative species of folk songs,
which originate, and are communicated orally, among illiterate or only
partly literate people. In all probability the initial version of a
ballad was composed by a single author, but he or she is unknown; and
since each singer who learns and repeats an oral ballad is apt to
introduce changes in both the text and the tune, it exists in many
variant forms. Typically, the popular ballad is dramatic, condensed, and
impersonal: the narrator begins with teh climactic episode, tells the
story tersely in action and dialogue (sometimes by means of dialogue
alone), and tells it without self-reference or the expression of
personal attitudes or feelings.
Ballad
Stanzas
Quatrain
Lord Randal
wight, on a summer's
night,
Was riding
o'er the lee,
And there he saw
a bonny birdie
Was singin'
on a tree:
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Introduction
Goethe,
who saw so many things with such clearness of vision, brought out the
charm of the popular ballad for readers of a later day in his remark that
the value of these songs of the people is to be found in the fact that
their motives are drawn directly from nature; and he added, that in the
art of saying things compactly, uneducated men have greater skill than
those who are educated. [...] No other form of verse has, therefore, in so
great a degree, the charm of freshness. In material, treatment, and
spirit, these ballads are set in sharp contrast with the poetry of [end of
page 7] the hour. They deal with historical events or incidents, with
local traditions, with personal adventure or achievement. They are, almost
without exception, entirely objective.
—Hamilton
W. Mabie, "Introduction," A Book of Old English Ballads
(New York: Macmillan, 1896): 7–28.
Vocabulary
folk, popular, traditional
ballad
broadside ballad
lyrical, literary ballad
anonymous
oral
song
narrative
impersonal, objective
dramatic
tragic, tragedy
simple, simplicity
dialogue
stanza
quatrain
couplet
iambic tetrameter
iambic trimeter
refrain
incremental repetition
stock phrases
rhythm
rhyme
rhyme scheme
death
love
the supernatural
legend
Links
|
- Poetic Form: Ballad,
Academy of American Poets
- Ballad,
Literary Terms and Definitions
- Ballad,
Literary Terms
- Ballad,
A Poet's Glossary
(2014)
- Susan
Tichy and Margaret Yocom, "Traditional
Ballads," George Mason University (What is a
ballad?, web resources)
- Wojtek Gardela, "What
Is a Ballad?," The University of Edinburgh
(tradition; form, structure and style; repetition;
formula; image and symbol)
- "Traditional
Ballads," Library of Congress (introduction,
ballads and epics, broadside ballads, European ballads
in America, Native American ballads, Ballad Themes:
Heroes, Outlaws, Murderers, and Workers)
- The
Ballad, Connections: A Hypertext Resource for
Literature
- English
Broadside Ballad Archive, University of
California, Santa Barbara
- Broadside
Ballads Online, Bodleian Libraries, University of
Oxford
- Isaiah
Thomas Broadside Ballad Project: Verses in Vogue with
the Vulgar, American Antiquarian Society
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Last
updated
November 15, 2016