Middle English Lyrics and Ballads-1.pptx

Study on Middle English lyrics and ballads

1. MIDDLE ENGLISH LYRICS & BALLADS Dr. Funda HAY [email protected]

2. Lyric Poems written to be sung conventions of subject : feeling and expression and the association with dance and rhythm means that formal and metrical patterns have significant expressive value Love and religious motifs are essential

3. MEDIEVAL LYRICS English began to develop literary types of lyric cultivated by the Troubador for the troubadours love meant only admiration and faithfulness by the Minnesanger in Germany Minne : refined or aristocratic love by the Italian poets produced the dolce stil nuovo the dolce stil nuovo : the sweet new style

4. Chaucer wrote lovers' complaints, verse letters in the form of ballades, roundels, and other highly stylized lyric types . In the fifteenth century, John Lydgate, Thomas Hoccleve, and others wrote lyrics of this sort .

5. Some Medieval lyrics are preserved in the late fourteenth-century illuminated Vernon manuscript and the early fourteenth century Harley manuscript . Vernon Manuscript from the website Wikipedia Harley Manuscript from the website Wikipedia

6. The topics and language in these poems are highly conventional, yet the lyrics often seem remarkably fresh and spontaneous. Many are marked by strong accentual rhythms & alliteration. A frequent topic : beloved's beauties ; return of spring

7. The lovers are usually male ; we do not know whether women composed popular lyrics from the website Wikipedia

8. Religious lyric derived from Latin songs and hymns in the 4th century bringing in accentual rhythm and rhyme from popular song .

9. Ballads a subdivision of folk song vs. a subgenre of poetry a song, transmitted orally, which tells a story. « the popular ballad is dramatic, condensed, and impersonal: the narrator begins with the climactic episode, tells the story tersely by means of action and dialogue »

10. ballad stanza : a quatrain in alternate four- and three-stress lines ; ; usually only the second and fourth lines rhyme (a 4 b 3 a 4 b 3 ) Many ballads employ set formulas : (1) stock descriptive phrases (2) a refrain in each stanza (3) incremental repetition

11. The traditional ballad has greatly influenced the form and style of lyric poetry in general ; engendered the literary ballad, a narrative poem written in deliberate imitation of the form, language, and spirit of the traditional ballad. The corpus includes ballads on a range of topics, which can be roughly classified by subject: Robin Hood ballads, Border/Historical ballads, T ragic ballads, Enchantment and Fairy ballads, Christian carols/ballads

12. BIBLIOGRAPHY Abrahams , M. H. A Glossary of Literary Terms . 7th Ed. Heinle & Heinle , 1999. Alexander, Michael. A History of English Literature . 3rd ed., Palgrave, 2000. Fuller, David. «Lyrics, Sacred and Secular.» A Companion to Medieval Poetry . Ed. Corinne Saunders. Wiley-Blackwell, 2010, 258-276. Greenblatt, Stephen, editor. Norton Anthology of English Literature . 8th ed., vol. 1, W. W. Norton & Company, 2006. Greentree, Rosemary. «Lyric.» A Companion to Medieval English Literature and Culture, c. 1350-1500 . Ed. Peter Brown. Blackwell Publishing, 2007, 387-405.