Definition From Old French meaning dancing song Narrative

Definition __________________________________________________ • From Old French meaning “dancing song” • Narrative composition in rhythmic verse suitable for singing • Poetry for the people during the Middle Ages • From oral tradition

CHARACTERISTICS _____________________________________________ _ About Supernatural Events Sensational Sordid Tragic subject matter

LITERARY CONVENTIONS __________________________ • Incremental Repetition • Question-and-Answer Format • Conventional Phrases • Strong, simple Beat • Refrain

Incremental Repetition • builds up suspense • repeated phrase or sentence with an added element each time until the climax is reached

Question-and-Answer Format • The facts of a story are gleaned little by little from the answers to build up suspense

CONVENTIONAL PHRASES ___________________________________ • Meaning beyond literal meaning Ex. – if a character is making his/her bed or making the bed narrow, the speaker is preparing for death

STRONG, SIMPLE BEAT ___________________________________ • Verse forms are uncomplicated • For general, not elitist audiences • Later forms used rhyme schemes, abcb, and meter, quatrain with four stresses alternating with lines of three stresses in standard ballad stanzas

REFRAIN ________________________________ • Repetition of a - word - phrase - line - group of lines • Allows singer to think of next verse

TYPES OF BALLADS ________________________________________ • Supernatural “Phantom 309” about ghost truck drivers • Historical “Ballad of the Green Berets” about the Vietnam War “Birmingham Sunday” from the civil rights struggle of the sixties “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” about a twentieth-century sea tragedy • Domestic “The Grand Tour” about a singer who tours his home after his wife leaves him