Course
Information for Independent Study in
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Registration You are responsible for your own course registration. Begin by getting an Individualized Section form from the English department. You may register for 1-3 hours of graduate credit. Conferences / Written work / Reading / Recordings Meetings We expect to meet as a group five or six times, time & place to be determined. Your input may change the agenda as time goes on, but here is how we see it at the outset -- 1. Introduction: What is a ballad? What are "ballad studies" and will they bite you? We'll talk about "types," "versions," & "fragments" of ballads and how they function in local and global contexts. And we'll look at one ballad through time -- "The Unfortunate Rake" from 17th c. London to 20th c. New Orleans & Texas. 2. Verse structure / narrative structure. We'll look at how forms of repetition & balance, stanza and rhyme, as well as the use of verbal formulae, effect the mode of narration that defines the ballad as a genre. 3. Metaphor & symbol: Keeping with our theme of sex & death we'll examine what happens when wells, flowers & rings meet swords, knives, thorns, & horns -- not to mention talking birds, magical corpses, elf knights, ghosts, and riddles. 4. Individual singers & singing communities: At this meeting, Susan & Peggy will each present a portrait of a singer -- one in Scotland and one in Appalachia. We'll talk about repertoire, transmission of ballads from one singer to another, the social meanings of ballad-singing for this singer's community, and how "collection" or contact with scholars and urban audiences affected their lives and their music. 5 - 6. Individual ballads: In our last meeting (more probably two) each of us -- students & faculty -- will present a single ballad, focusing aspects, such as the ballad's variants, its form & structure, its collection history & current vitality, and its social & metaphorical meanings. Conferences Each of you should work out a schedule of individual conferences with your faculty member. Written Work Each of you should contract with your faculty member for written work expected. Each of you will be asked to diagram the narrative & verse structure of at least one ballad. Bring a draft to our second meeting, revise after the meeting. Each of you should keep a Reading/Listening journal. Those planning to use "traditional ballads" or "Scottish ballads" as an entry on the MFA exam list should work toward compiling an annotated anthology of ballad texts for the final stages of exam preparation. This anthology, minus the annotations, can also be used in the exam itself. Please talk to Susan if you have questions. Those enrolled for three credits will complete a major project, such as a research paper or a casebook. Please talk to your faculty member. Reading Meeting 1 / Meeting 2 / Meeting 3 / Meeting 4 / History & Transmission / Complete List of Materials at Reserve Desk / Use the Annotated Bibliography for more detail on the readings we've assigned or suggested. Most of your readings may be found at the Reserve Desk at the Johnson Center. All required readings are there, as are many optional readings. A complete list of materials on Reserve appears after the sequential reading list. Optional readings not owned by the library (including those on the "History & Transmission" list) are available from faculty for photocopy. **Note that the heaviest reading is for our second meeting.** Ballad
Texts: Francis James Child’s 5-volume The English and Scottish Popular Ballads will be among the books on Reserve for your use. Most of the ballads we'll discuss can be found there in multiple versions. If you want a small handy book with a number of good texts, though only single versions of each, we recommend Emily Lyle’s Scottish Ballads, which you should be able to find used (or new from Amazon.co.uk). Also useful is the one-volume reduction of Child, edited by Sargeant & Kittredge, if you can find one. Our library has a copy. More specialized books, collecting the songs of a particular time & place, or the songs of a particular singing community, may also be useful. For Scotland in the 19th & early 20th centuries, for example, you might want to examine The Greig-Duncan Folk Song Collection, edited by Patrick Shuldham-Shaw & Emily Lyle, and Ord’s Bothy Songs and Ballads of Aberdeen, Banff & Moray, Angus and the Mearns. For Scottish Traveller singers, you'd want two books by Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger: Travellers’ Songs from England and Scotland, and Till Doomsday in the Afternoon: The Stewart Family of Blair. Introductory What Is a Ballad? A.L. Lloyd: “The Big Ballads.” Folk Song in A major English
figure of the
mid-century Revival, from a book he says is for beginners, not experts.
Not
academically rigorous by today’s terms, but a wise and far-ranging
introduction. Introduces ballads along with the major trends in ballad scholarship. Defines the “type/variant” concept and the problems that arise when either side of that balance is emphasized. Addresses the issue of literacy among singers. Introduces most issues & many basic terms, such as commonplaces (which he calls “formulaic units”) tale role, audience’s role in completing meaning, etc.
A great intro to
ballad Scots & ballad English, by a major figure
of the
mid-century Revival and founder of the A
contemporary American poet & critic critiques the cultural uses of
ballad
in literary discourse as a location of our various desires: otherness,
authenticity, belatedness, and so forth. "Notes on Distressed Genres,"
in the same volume, also highly recommended. Further
(optional) reading: Hamish Henderson: "The Ballad, The
Folk and the Oral Tradition." The
People's Past, ed. Cowan. Photocopy
This unit of reading is our
longest and most technical. We suggest you read the
introduction to McCarthy's book before you read David Buchan. Part
I is not directly related to this week's discussion, but you should
read it, now or later.
Those enrolled for 3
credits should read this whole section. Those enrolled for 1 credit
should read, at a minimum, Chapters 8, 9, 12 & 13.
Further (optional)
reading on
form & structure: Stewart,
George R. “The Meter of the Popular Ballad,” in The
Critics and the Ballad, ed. Leach. Photocopy
Barre Toelken: readings (not yet selected) from Morning Dew and Roses: Nuance, Metaphor, and Meaning in Folksongs. Reserve Desk David
Atkinson: “Incest and ‘Edward’.” The
English Traditional Ballad. Reserve Desk. David Atkinson: “Motivation, Gender, and Talking Birds.” The English Traditional Ballad. Reserve Desk. Roger deV Renwick: “The Semiotics of Sexual Liaisons.” English Folk Poetry: Structure and Meaning. Reserve Desk Readings This set of readings is not tied to any one of our meetings but may help in any. Early: Lyle,
Emily. “Parity of Ignorance: Child’s Judgment of ‘Sir Colin’ and the
Scottish
Verdict ‘Not Proven’,” in Harris, The
Ballad as Oral Literature. Argues a position opposite to
Fowler's -- namely , that we cannot assume a ballad is no older than
its oldest surviving written copy. Photocopy David Buchan: Part I of The Ballad and the Folk. Reserve Desk William McCarthy: Part One of The Ballad Matrix. Reserve Desk Gavin
Sprott: “Traditional Music: The Material Background,” in Cowan, The People’s Past. Photocopy Edward
J. Cowan. “Calvinism and the Survival of the Folk,” The
People’s Past. Photocopy History:
Henderson, Lizanne. “The Road to Elfland: Fairy Belief and the Child
Ballads,” in The Ballad in Scottish
History, ed. Cowan. Photocopy
Hamish
Henderson: several short pieces are useful, including “The Underground
of
Song,” and “The Ballad and Popular Tradition to 1660,” in Alias
MacAlias, and “The Ballad, the Folk, and the Oral Tradition,”
in Cowan’s The People’s Past. Photocopy Brown,
Mary Ellen. “Old Singing Women and the Canons of Scottish Balladry and
Song,”
in A History of Scottish Women’s Writing. GMU
has this book in electronic form: search for it in the catalog, then
click the link & enter your G-number. Scottish Traveller singers, 20th c.: Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger: Travellers’ Songs from Ewan
MacColl and Peggy Seeger: Till Doomsday in
the Afternoon: The Stewart
Family of Blair. You'll
have to get this via Interlibrary Loan. Highly recommended. Douglas, Sheila. “Belle Stewart, ‘The Queen Amang the Heather,” in Russell and Atkinson. Reserve Desk Flemming G. Andersen: "The Living Oral Tradition: Jeannie Robertson's 'Little Mattie Groves'." The Ballad as Narrative. Reserve Desk Herschel
Gower & James Porter: “Jeannie Robertson: The Child Ballads” and a
companion article by Allie Munro: “Lizzie Higgins, and the Oral
Transmission of
Ten Child Ballads.” Lizzie was Jeannie’s daughter. Photocopy Hamish Henderson & Francis Collinson. “New
Child Ballad Variants from Oral
Tradition” discusses a number of ballads collected in the 1950s &
1960s in England, 18th-19th Centuries: David Atkinson: The Traditional English Ballad Reserve Desk Flemming G. Anderson: "Oral Tradition in England in the Eighteenth Century: 'Lord Lovel'." The Ballad as Narrative. Reserve Desk
North America: Revival history: Niall
MacKinnon: The British Folk Scene:
Musical Performance and Social Identity. Britta
Sweers. “Ghosts of voices: English folk(-rock) musicians and the
transmission
of traditional music. In Russell & Atkinson. performance practice of Ewan MacColl.” In Russell & Atkinson. Complete List of Materials on
Reserve Andersen, Flemming G., Otto
Holapfel, &
Thomas Pettit. The Ballad as Narrative:
Studies in the Ballad Traditions of Mtg. 2. Fleming G.
Andersen: "From Tradition to Print: Ballads on Broadsides." History: Chapters 1,
3, 4, 5 Atkinson, David. The
English Traditional Ballad: Theory, method, and practice. Mtg. 1. Introduction Mtg. 3. “Incest and
Edward.” Optional for Mtg. 3.
“Motivation, Gender, and Talking Birds” Bronson, Bertrand Harris. The Ballad as Song. Mtg. 1. “On the Buchan, David. The
Ballad and the Folk. East Mtg. 2. Part II
required for those taking 3 credits; chapters 8, 9, 12, 13 required for
those
taking 1 credit. History: Part I Campbell, Olive
D. English Folk Songs from the
Southern Appalachians. NY: G.P. Putnam’s sons, 1917. A source of
texts. No assigned readings. Child, Francis James, editor. The
English
and Scottish Popular Ballads, 5 volumes. Principle source of ballad texts,
brief but excellent notes. Dugaw, Dianne, ed. The
Anglo-American Ballad: A Folklore Casebook. NY & London: Fowler, David C. A
Literary History of the Popular Ballad. History: Entire book
highly recommended. See annotation. Mtg. 1.
Lloyd, A.L. “The Big
Ballads,” Folk
Song in Mtg. 1.
MacColl, Ewan and Peggy Seeger. Travellers’
Songs from A landmark work of
field collection & musical notation. No assigned readings.
McCarthy, William Bernard. The Ballad Matrix: Personality, Milieu, and
the Oral Tradition. Mtg. 2. Introduction & Part II You should read the entire book
McKean, Thomas A., ed. The
Flowering
Thorn: International Ballad Studies. Porter, James, editor. The
Ballad Image: Essays Presented to Bertrand Harris Bronson. Optional for Mtg. 2. Friedman,
Albert B. “The Oral-Formulaic Theory of Balladry: A Rebuttal.” Optional for Mtg. 2. Shields,
Hugh. “Impossibles in Ballad Style.” Porter, James and Herschel Gower. Jeannie Robertson: Emergent Singer,
Transformative Voice. History & transmission: highly
recommended. Includes song texts w/ musical notation, sketch of her
life, extensive quotation from interviews, discussion of Robertson's
beliefs about ballad singing.
Renwick, Roger deV. English
Folk Poetry: Structure and Meaning. No city: Optional for Mtg. 2.
"The Semiotics of Sexual Liaisons." Stewart, Susan. Crimes
of Writing: Problems in the Containment of Representation. Mtg. 1. “Scandals of the
Ballad.” Toelken, Barre. Morning
Dew and Roses: Nuance, Metaphor, and Meaning in Folksongs. Recordings We will be referencing around 40 ballads. List will be posted soon! |
Ballads
Susan Tichy, |
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