domenica 3 febbraio 2013

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.

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