ENGL 345 Lecture Notes - Folk Music, Beat Generation, Free Verse

• School: McGill University
• Department: English (Arts)
• Course: ENGL 345
• Professor: Nathalie Cooke

Document Summary

Journal entry 1 for the week of september 19th 2011. The ballad is narrative form of poetry, which is centered around a main hero who has embarked on some sort of dramatic adventure. The hero of the ballad is telling his journey, in a dramatized way. The traditional ballad was orally passed down within a community and was usually sung. Since each person told the story of the hero differently, the ballad would change with each person s rendition. The author of the traditional ballad often remained anonymous. The literary ballad is a narrative poem written in deliberate imitation of the form, language and spirit of the traditional ballad (abrams 22). Typically, the popular ballad is dramatic, condensed and impersonal: the narrator begins with the climactic episode, tells the story tersely in action and dialogue, and tells it without self-reference or the expression of personal attitudes or feelings (abrams 21).