Ballads: Poetry and Song from the Eighteenth Century

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

Research Seminar; The ballad has long been recognized as crucial to the development of British Poetry in the eighteenth century. Precisely what a ballad is, however, remains a remarkably vexed question. This is in part because ballads fall inconveniently between disciplines ? literature, music, book history, folklore, cultural studies ? so that the study of ballads requires a broad interdisciplinary approach. For the literary scholar in particular the ballad poses difficulties because it does not fit conveniently within our familiar frameworks for study. Often there is no known author; only occasionally do we have any idea when a ballad was written; even when we know the name of the printer we cannot be sure the print we have is the earliest printing. Moreover, the printed life of ballads represents only one part of their existence: they need also to be understood as performance texts that straddle the world of orality and print. Rather than seeing these challenges as hurdles to our understanding, this class will explore the possibilities that the ballad opens up for reconsidering our approaches to the study of literature. This research seminar will train students in the use of ballad archives and will require a substantial research paper, which considers both textual and performative aspects of ballad production.