Narrative poem

A narrative poem is a long story in vers that contains many narrative elements. In fact there are desciptions of the characters, there is the use of a narrator and there is the setting in time and place. It's written in Middle English. It's often in the first person. In Middle Ages there were many genres of narrative poem: the "examples", that have a moral teaching from real events or fantastic situations; the romance, that is about love and war; and the fabliau, that is comic and it's about sex. The goal of the narrative poem is to teach values and to give a moral. It tells about the changing of the society from a religious view to a lay outlook. The greatest example of a narrative poem in medieval literature is "Canterbury's Tales", written by Geoffrey Chaucer.It's a long poem in vers, framed by a General Prologue. It's set in Canterbury, Jerusalem, Rome and Santiago of Compostela. It tells about all the society except the aristocrats.

Ballads

A ballad is a poetical composition in vers that is performed as a song. It's a short narrative song. The word "ballad" derives from the Latin and means "dancing". Balllads originallly were transmited orally and they were accompanied by music. Scops entertained people with ballads in the halls of kings. Only then ballads were written in Old English by anonymous writers. The characters of ballads are kings, heros, and warriors. The ballad tells a dramatic story as a series of rapid flashes. It focuses on a single crucial episode and it tells dramatic events. In ballads there are many refrains, repetitions and poetical devices like alliterations, kennings, assonances and consonances. There are formulaic phrases and stock-images. Popular ballads are a mixture of dialogue and narration. They are impersonal, so the ballad's narrators don't speak in the first person. Ballads have many themes: love; war between English and Scottish people; border ballads; ballads of outlaws, like Robin Hood; family tragedies; and ballads of magic, about fairies, ghosts and witches. Ballads have many stanzas, and each stanza is made up of  four lines: two questions and two answers.