The evolution of ballads and narrative poetry in the Middle Ages

What are the origins and characteristics of medieval ballads?

Medieval Ballad were too popular in English world. There were a different kind of ballad but all maintain the same narrative outline. Ballad in first were Communal ring-dance. Authorship was attributed or to individual poem or community.

MedBall talks about a series of rapid flashes and dramatic story not as a continuous sequence of events.

M.B was characterized by repetitive structures ,melody and meter to encourage the memory.

Structure and Themes of Traditional Ballads

traditional ballad consist into a stanza of 4 lines rhyming ABCB. There were a lot of repetition.

Traditional ballad was in simple English to be understood by all, narrator use a conventional vocabulary called ‘’commonplace’’ and formulaic phrases. ballad talks about magic world were live speaking animals and birds, fairies, witches and ghosts who return from the grave.

ballads were divided into:

• ballad of magic about fairies, ghosts..

• Border ballads(enemy between English and Scottish)

• ballad of love and domestic tragedy

• ballad of outlaws (such as robin hood)

Example: Lord Randal: dialogue between lord Randal and his mother that can be divided into 3part: 1)he explains what was happened in the greenwood;2)who he meet;3)the testament (what he had left to his parents)

Narrative Poetry in the Middle Ages

Narrative Poem was a narrative in verse that have a lot of Narrative elements (such as description of character, setting in place and time). The narrator is often in I person.

The Poem talks about a very popular story in middle ages, the scope was to entertain and to instruct.

Narrative poem include example (parables and fables ) where real events coexisted with fantastic situation for a moral teaching.

Evolution and Impact of Narrative Poetry

Also there were a romance that talks about love and war in a court, the subject were often anti-clerical.

Medieval narrative poem pass from a religious tone to a lay outlook. The narration was linked with a moral view of time and social structure. They talk about an individual characters, his lifestyles, his psychology and his experiences. The greatest example of this literature genre was Geoffrey Chaucer with is best seller Canterbury Tales (long poem introduced by a general prologue).