Study on Middle English lyrics and ballads

1. MIDDLE ENGLISH LYRICS &
BALLADS
Dr. Funda HAY
fhay@ankara.edu.tr

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 (a4b3
a4b3)
• 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,
• Tragic 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.