The Printed Record of an Oral Tradition: Anna Gordon Brown's Ballads
Traditional ballads—those sung narratives whose origins are uncertain and whose authorship is unknown—have been difficult for literary scholars to account for and to analyze. Anonymous folk songs, they have moved between oral tradition and printed versions in broadsides or chapbooks and back aga...
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| Other Authors: | |
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | en_US |
| Published: |
University of South Carolina Press
2013
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/78292 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6298-3896 |
| _version_ | 1811073452689326080 |
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| author | Perry, Ruth |
| author2 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Humanities. Literature Section |
| author_facet | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Humanities. Literature Section Perry, Ruth |
| author_sort | Perry, Ruth |
| collection | MIT |
| description | Traditional ballads—those sung narratives whose origins are uncertain
and whose authorship is unknown—have been difficult for literary
scholars to account for and to analyze. Anonymous folk songs, they have
moved between oral tradition and printed versions in broadsides or
chapbooks and back again over the course of many centuries. They rarely
have a single definitive text but can be found in many variants, making
textual analysis tricky. Most scholars who have studied ballads are either
medievalists—when the ballads are thought to have originated—or
eighteenth-century scholars—the century when ballads were first
collected. Francis J. Child, Harvard’s first professor of vernacular
literature in English, was both. He thought of ballads as our “earliest
known poetry,” whose “historical and natural place is anterior to the
appearance of the poetry of art”; and he collected as many of them as he
could with all their rich variations in the late nineteenth century. |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-23T09:33:20Z |
| format | Article |
| id | mit-1721.1/78292 |
| institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| language | en_US |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-23T09:33:20Z |
| publishDate | 2013 |
| publisher | University of South Carolina Press |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | mit-1721.1/782922022-09-26T12:12:40Z The Printed Record of an Oral Tradition: Anna Gordon Brown's Ballads Perry, Ruth Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Humanities. Literature Section Perry, Ruth Perry, Ruth Traditional ballads—those sung narratives whose origins are uncertain and whose authorship is unknown—have been difficult for literary scholars to account for and to analyze. Anonymous folk songs, they have moved between oral tradition and printed versions in broadsides or chapbooks and back again over the course of many centuries. They rarely have a single definitive text but can be found in many variants, making textual analysis tricky. Most scholars who have studied ballads are either medievalists—when the ballads are thought to have originated—or eighteenth-century scholars—the century when ballads were first collected. Francis J. Child, Harvard’s first professor of vernacular literature in English, was both. He thought of ballads as our “earliest known poetry,” whose “historical and natural place is anterior to the appearance of the poetry of art”; and he collected as many of them as he could with all their rich variations in the late nineteenth century. 2013-04-04T18:07:52Z 2013-04-04T18:07:52Z 2012-01 Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/JournalArticle 0039-3770 http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/78292 Perry, Ruth (2012). "THE PRINTED RECORD OF AN ORAL TRADITION: ANNA GORDON BROWN'S BALLADS," Studies in Scottish Literature: Vol. 38: Iss. 1, 71–91. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6298-3896 en_US http://scholarcommons.sc.edu/ssl/vol38/iss1/13 Studies in Scottish Literature Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use. application/pdf University of South Carolina Press Perry via Mark Szarko |
| spellingShingle | Perry, Ruth The Printed Record of an Oral Tradition: Anna Gordon Brown's Ballads |
| title | The Printed Record of an Oral Tradition: Anna Gordon Brown's Ballads |
| title_full | The Printed Record of an Oral Tradition: Anna Gordon Brown's Ballads |
| title_fullStr | The Printed Record of an Oral Tradition: Anna Gordon Brown's Ballads |
| title_full_unstemmed | The Printed Record of an Oral Tradition: Anna Gordon Brown's Ballads |
| title_short | The Printed Record of an Oral Tradition: Anna Gordon Brown's Ballads |
| title_sort | printed record of an oral tradition anna gordon brown s ballads |
| url | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/78292 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6298-3896 |
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