Ballad Collection, Lyric, and the Canon: The Call of the Popular from the Restoration to the New CriticismUniversity of Pennsylvania Press, 2013 M04 23 - 304 pages The humble ballad, defined in 1728 as "a song commonly sung up and down the streets," was widely used in elite literature in the eighteenth century and beyond. Authors ranging from John Gay to William Blake to Felicia Hemans incorporated the seemingly incongruous genre of the ballad into their work. Ballads were central to the Scottish Enlightenment's theorization of culture and nationality, to Shakespeare's canonization in the eighteenth century, and to the New Criticism's most influential work, Understanding Poetry. Just how and why did the ballad appeal to so many authors from the Restoration period to the end of the Romantic era and into the twentieth century? |
From inside the book
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... singing, whether or not they already know the tune or the words. The power of the ballad to produce social solidarity is clearly marked by the authors in this study who devote significant energy to setting verse to music, like John Gay ...
... singing parade of Shakespearean characters as representatives of the nation (Chapter 3). The need to preserve this semiautonomy is particularly important when discussing Romantic lyric (Chapter 4). By this point, ballad collection has a ...
... sing them. That act of sympathy challenges high-low distinctions by showing that the drive to see oneself as an individual—to “be particular,” in the words of the play—is found among persons of all classes. Gay gives the screw an— other ...
... singing new verses set to the tune “Cold and Raw”: If any Wench Venus's girdle wear, Though she be never so ugly; Lillys and Roses will quickly appear, And her Face look wond'rous smuggly. Beneath the left Ear so fit but a Cord, (A Rope ...
... sing my self, I keep those that can.—” (9). So here, songs are associated with the energetic Cavaliers of “the last Age,” but that age is set firmly in the past. D'Urfey takes his aggressive historicizing a step further in the character ...
Contents
1 | |
15 | |
Pastoral Progress and the Lyric Split in Allan Ramsay John Home and Robert Burns | 44 |
Collecting Shakespeares SongsShakespeare as Song Collector | 97 |
4 Ballads and the Problem of Lyric Violence in Blake and Wordsworth | 136 |
Child Ballads Childrens Ballads and the New Criticism | 185 |
Notes | 229 |
Bibliography | 263 |
Index | 283 |
Acknowledgments | 293 |
Other editions - View all
Ballad Collection, Lyric, and the Canon: The Call of the Popular from the ... Steve Newman No preview available - 2007 |