Research Catalog

Title

The English traditional ballad : theory, method, and practice / David Atkinson.

Author

Atkinson, David, 1955 February 23-

Publication

Aldershot, Hants, England ; Burlington, VT : Ashgate, ©2002.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xiv, 310 pages; 25 cm

Summary

• "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. In The English Traditional Ballad, David Atkinson 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."--Jacket.

Series Statement

Ashgate popular and folk music series

Uniform Title

Ashgate popular and folk music series.

Subject

• Ballads, English > Great Britain > History and criticism
• Ballads, English
• Balladen
• Engels
• Great Britain

Genre/Form

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

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?

ISBN

• 0754606341
• 9780754606345

LCCN

2002018209

OCLC

• ocm48857851
• 48857851
• SCSB-1260562

Owning Institutions

Princeton University Library