Professor Fowler traces the development of the English and Scottish popular ballad from its beginning in the fifteenth century through the eighteenth century.
This is the first work to offer a theory of ballad origins which is literary rather than anthropological; that is, here the ballad is treated as a literary composition differing from other literature only in musical setting and oral transmission.
Individual chapters treat the various phases of ballad history.
There are discussions, for example, of the riddles, and especially of the religious lyrics and carols, which belong to the folksong tradition that preceded and accompanied the development of balladry.
A separate chapter is devoted to the revenant (ghost) ballads, which are seen, not as survivals of pagan beliefs, but as imaginative extensions of Christian doctrine surviving from the Middle Ages in folk tradition.
The first work to present a study of the evolution of ballad style with careful attention to the dates and sources of texts as the basis of analysis, and the first to offer a literary theory of ballad origins, this work is a necessity for all careful scholars of literature.
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