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Theme : English ballads in the 14th and 15th century
Level :intermediate / B1
Time : 80 min+
Aims :
Introduction
The genre form of ballade, which was especially popular in French poetry of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, attracted attention of many contemporary poets, as well as the authors of later periods (including representatives of English literature). Ballade consisted of three main stanzas, which had the same rhythmic structure and complex scheme of rhyming, and a shortened final stanza, or l'envoi; all four stanzas ended with the same refrain. During the Renaissance epoch, English authors (especially Elizabethan poets) tried to master this form, but later interest to it weakened.
Victorian epoch, being the age of the so-called “medieval revival”, became also the period of ballade revival in English literature, due to the creative activities of Pre-Raphaelites (Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Algernon Charles Swinburne, and others). At the end of the century Joseph Rudyard Kipling developed the ballade traditions in his verse and mastered this French lyrical form.
A ballad is a kind of verse, sometimes narrative in nature, often set to music and developed from 14th and 15th-century minstrelsy. Writers in Australia, North Africa, North America, as well as Europe and South America used the form. Ballads developed from 14th and 15th-century minstrelsy. The minstrel, a kind of performer in Medieval Europe, could be a musician, acrobat, singer or any other type of conceivable performer. As the decades and centuries progressed, the word “minstrel” narrowed to mean someone who sang songs and/or played musical instruments. The connection to the ballad is clear when one considers the fact that minstrels usually performed songs that related stories of distant places or historical events. These were more often than not imagined, and created from the minstrel’s own imaginations. While there are a number of variations, traditionally a ballad consists of thirteen lines with a varying rhyme scheme. Sometimes they followed the pattern, ABABBCBC with 14 syllables lines. Other times the pattern ABCB or ABAB repeated and the lines alternated between eight and six syllables. Due to the fact that ballads were first conceived of as performance songs, couplets were a popular way to structure the lines. A couplet consists of two lines of poetry usually of the same length, that rhyme. But, as the ballad grew more popular and more poets, songwriters, and composers chose to make use of its form the structure evolved. Now, because of the endless variation used by writers in the past and the present, it is difficult to strictly define what about it is and what it isn’t.
A ballad is a form of verse, often a narrative set to music. Ballads derive from the medieval French chanson balladée or ballade, which were originally "dance songs". Ballads were particularly characteristic of the popular poetry and song of Britain and Ireland from the later medieval period until the 19th century. They were widely used across Europe, and later in Australia, North Africa, North America and South America. Ballads are often 13 lines with an ABABBCBC form, consisting of couplets (two lines) of rhymed verse, each of 14 syllables. Another common form is ABAB or ABCB repeated, in alternating eight and six syllable lines.
Many ballads were written and sold as single sheet broadsides. The form was often used by poets and composers from the 18th century onwards to produce lyrical ballads. In the later 19th century, the term took on the meaning of a slow form of popular love song and is often used for any love song, particularly the sentimental ballad of pop or rock music, although the term is also associated with the concept of a stylized storytelling song or poem, particularly when used as a title for other media such as a film.
The ballad derives its name from medieval Scottish dance songs or "ballares" (L: ballare, to dance), from which 'ballet' is also derived, as did the alternative rival form that became the French ballade. As a narrative song, their theme and function may originate from Scandinavian and Germanic traditions of storytelling that can be seen in poems such as Beowulf. Musically they were influenced by the Minnelieder of the Minnesang tradition. The earliest example of a recognizable ballad in form in England is "Judas" in a 13th-century manuscript.
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