English poetry appreciation: essay 1Chris Chang [4-2] Student number: 2014012644May 18th, 2015The Evaluation Of Ballad Form——An example of how a literary ballad takes the traditional balladform and uses it in more complex and innovative waysCenturies-old in practice, the composition of ballads began in the European folk tradition, in many cases accompanied by musical instruments. Ballads were not originally transcribed, but rather preserved orally for generations, passed along through recitation.A typical ballad is a plot-driven song, with one or more characters hurriedly unfurling events leading to a dramatic conclusion. To convey that sense of emotional urgency, the ballad is often constructed in quatrain stanzas, each line containing as few as three or four stresses and rhyming either the second and fourth lines, or all alternating lines. Both traditional ballads and literary ballads use this form to express the ideas and feelings of the poets, but the literary ballads tend to be more organized and effective.The form of ballads keeps evolving up with the time, and actually all the ballads do not have the same formal consistency as some other poetic forms. Ballads emphasize strong rhythms, repetition of key phrases, and rhymes; if you hear a traditional ballad, you will know that you are hearing a poem. Ballads are meant to be song-like and to remind readers of oral poetry. Though we can always identify a ballad by these certain characteristics, the traditional ballads and literary ones still differ from each other type. Here are some analysis of the differences between the forms of traditional poets and literary ones, which are based on the contrast of the traditional ballad She Moved Through the Fair and the literary one Two Red Roses Across the Moon.1.Simple language. Most ballads are composed for audiences of non-specialist hearers orreaders. Therefore, they feature language that people can understand without specialist training or repeated readings. When we see the ballad She Moved Through the Fair, there are many everyday words in the lines, especially the description of the movement of the beloved: She stepped away from me / And she moved through the fair / And fondly I watched her / Move here and move there.All the descriptions are just plain and modest, which is accessible to every reader.Comparing to the literary one Two Red Roses Across the Moon, the poet William Morris used more complicated and meaningful words. For instance, You scarce could see for the scarlet and blue / A golden helm or a golden shoe / So he cried, as the fight grew thick at the noon / Two red roses across the moon! In this stanza, William used more colorful words to express the feelings andemotions.Regardless of their intended audience, the choice of the ballad form generally implies a weaker emphasis on simple language. But as ballads, simple language is one of the most important characters, so even in the literary ballad Two Red Roses Across the Moon, William Morris just used a few complicated words to make the poet more colorful and well-designed. But overly intellectual or obscure is never used to describe a ballad, even the literary ones.2. Stories. Ballads tend to be narrative poems, poems that tell stories, as opposed to lyric poems, whichemphasize the emotions of the speaker and are less dramatic. This is a tradition of ballads. For example, in the traditional ballad She Moved Through the Fair, which tells a story about a poor young boy who is obsessed with a rich girl. This is a love story full of sorrow, in the model of Romeo & Juliet, and the narrator is just the boy. As for Two Red Roses Across the Moon, it tells a story between a lady with impressive voice and a knight who is going for a war. But in this ballad, the narrator changes into a person who is not involved in the relationship, just like the poet himself.As we can see, poets play different roles in this two types of ballads. In the traditional ballads, poets(maybe even no poets) are often part of the stories while the poets of literary ballads are more likely to be a by-stander. But this is not so typical.3. Repetition. A ballad often has a refrain, a repeated section that divides segments of the story. Many ballads also employ incremental repetition, in which a phrase recurs with minor differences as the story progresses.In the traditional ballad, the repetition is simple, mocking the way people talk, which is actually less logical. The repetition in the folk ballads tends to be a way to express the emotions and feelings, which makes the narration more believable. As for the later literary ballad, the repetition is better organized and designed(the example of this is the repetition of “Two red roses across the moon”), the repetitions are mostly used to make the poets and the rhymes organized. The repetition is more technical in the folk ballad.4. Dialogue. As you might expect in a narrative genre, ballads often incorporate multiple characters into their stories. Often, since changes of voice were communicated orally, written transcriptions of oral ballads give little or no indication that the speaker has changed. So as you can see, dialogues are not so normal in folk ballads because the folk ballads are a nearly literally record of a narration, so the dialogues are not so appropriate to appear in a folk ballad.But in a literary ballad, the dialogues are more common, this is a great method to explain the relationships between the roles in the ballads, so it’s often used as a technical add to the narration to make the ballads a little more intelligent and colorful.The folk ballad belongs to the oral tradition. It is anonymous, and it is transmitted from singer to singer by word of mouth. The ballad form is quite ancient. In fact, the pre-existing oral materials that were integrated into the Homeric epics probably consisted largely of ballads and other closely related forms.Ballad poets drew their material from community life, from local and national history, and from legends and folklore. Their tales are usually of adventure, war, love, death, violence, betrayal, and the supernatural.In places where the folk ballad remains as a living tradition, the bards not only recite ballads handed down through countless generations, but also compose new ballads along the familiar narrative pattern, though dealing with recent events.As a conclusion, the traditional ballads are natural and less decorated or polished, it’s mostly based on the reality and little involved with technical methods. And as the result of evolution of ballads, literary ballads are more organized and complex to tell a story and deliver the emotions, while the poets keep using simple language and other skills to make the ballads seem like traditional ones.references1./~simpsone/Connections/Poetry/Forms/ode1.html2./folk-ballads-broadside-ballads-literary-ballads-61808.html3./poetsorg/text/poetic-form-ballad4.The British Literary Ballad。
