| Series |
Ashgate popular and folk music series
Ashgate popular and folk music series. ^A512613
|
| Contents |
Introduction: accessing ballad tradition -- The lover's tasks in 'The Unquiet Grave' -- Comic ballads and married life -- Incest and 'Edward' -- Motivation, gender, and talking birds -- Magical corpses and the discovery of murder -- An English ballad tradition? |
| Abstract |
Ballads are a fascinating subject of study not least because of their endless variety. It is quite remarkable that ballads taken down or recorded from singers separated by centuries in time and by hundreds of kilometres in distance, should be both different and yet recognisably the same. This book examines the ways in which the body of ballads known in England make reference both to ballads from elsewhere and to other English folk songs. The book outlines current theoretical directions in ballad scholarship: structuralism, traditional referentiality, genre and context, print and oral transmission, and the theory of tradition and revival. These are combined to offer readers a method of approaching the central issue in ballad studies--the creation of meaning(s) out of ballad texts. |
| Bibliography note | Includes bibliographical references (pages 253-284), discography (pages 285-288), and indexes. |
| LCCN | 2002018209 |
| ISBN | 0754606341 (alk. paper) |
