Page 12 - DENG405_BRITISH_POETRY

Unit 1: Major Literary Terms–I

Child died before writing a commentary on his work it is uncertain exactly how and why he Notes
differentiated the 305 ballads printed that would be published as The English and Scottish Popular
Ballads. There have been many different and contradictory attempts to classify traditional ballads
by theme, but commonly identified types are the religious, supernatural, tragic, love ballads, historic,
legendary and humorous.

1.2.5 Broadsides Ballads

Broadside ballads were a product of the development of cheap print in the 16th century. They were
generally printed on one side of a medium to large sheet of poor quality paper. In their heyday of the
first half of the 17th century, they were printed in black-letter or gothic type and included multiple,
eye-catching illustrations, a popular tune tile, as well as an alluring poem. By the 18th century, they
were printed in white letter or roman type and often without much decoration. These later sheets
could include many individual songs, which would be cut apart and sold individually as “slipsongs.”
Alternatively, they might be folded to make small cheap books or “chapbooks” which often drew on
ballad stories. They were produced in huge numbers, with over 400,000 being sold in England annually
by the 1660s. Tessa Watt estimates the number of copies sold may have been in the millions. Many
were sold by travelling chapmen in city streets or at fairs. The subject matter varied from what has
been defined as the traditional ballad, although many traditional ballads were printed as broadsides.
Among the topics were love, religion, drinking-songs, legends, and early journalism, which included
disasters, political events and signs, wonders and prodigies.

Self Assessment
Fill in the blanks:
1. ...... is the repetition of vowel sounds to create internal rhyming within phrases or sentences.
2. Assonance is a common substitution of ...... in the popular ballad.
3. Ballad is a form of ...... .
4. European ballads have been generally classified into ...... major groups.
5. ...... is poetry written in unrhymed iambic pentameter.

1.2.6 Literary Ballads

Literary or lyrical ballads grew out of an increasing interest in the ballad form among social elites and
intellectuals, particularly in the Romantic Movement from the later 18th century. Respected literary
figures like Robert Burns and Sir Walter Scott in Scotland both collected and wrote their own ballads,
using the form to create an artistic product. Similarly in England William Wordsworth and Samuel
Taylor Coleridge produced a collection of Lyrical Ballads in 1798, including Coleridge’s ‘The Rime of
the Ancient Mariner’. At the same time in Germany Goethe cooperated with Schiller on a series of
ballads, some of which were later set to music by Schubert. Later important examples of the poetic
form included Rudyard Kipling’s ‘Barrack Room Ballads’ (1892-6) and Oscar Wilde’s ‘Ballad of Reading
Goal’ (1897).

1.3 Introduction to Blank Verse

Blank verse is poetry written in unrhymed iambic pentameter. It has been described as “probably the
most common and influential form that English poetry has taken since the sixteenth century” and
Paul Fussell has claimed that “about three-quarters of all English poetry is in blank verse.”

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