Definition__________________________________________________________________________________________________

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• 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__________________________________________________________________________________________

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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