A narrative poem, often in quatrains rhymed ABCB and meant to be sung, that tells a compressed story through dialogue and repeated refrain rather than sustained description, rooted in oral folk tradition. Wordsworth and Coleridge's Lyrical Ballads (1798) deliberately claimed the word for literary poetry, presenting invented narrative poems, Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner among them, in the plain stanza form and singing cadence of the folk ballad.
Facts
Place of OriginRooted in the oral folk tradition of medieval and early modern Europe, well before it was claimed for literary poetry. 1 StructureTypically quatrains rhymed ABCB, meant to be sung, telling a compressed story through dialogue and a repeated refrain rather than sustained description. 1 Notable ExampleSamuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, in Wordsworth and Coleridge's Lyrical Ballads (1798). 1 Connections
Associated With
Source The Norton Anthology of World Literature
Source Richard Holmes, Coleridge: Early Visions (1989)Richard Holmes
Form Of Genre
Lyric Poetry, Genres Anthologized as a lyric form (a sung narrative) since Lyrical Ballads itself named the poems lyrical; Princeton Encyclopedia treats the ballad among the lyric-adjacent folk forms rather than under long narrative epic.
Source The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
Influenced
Source Encyclopaedia Britannica
In the Other Atlases
- Also in Geography Atlas: Europe, originated there.
Sources
1. The Norton Anthology of World Literature
W. W. Norton & Company
The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
Princeton University Press- Ballad entry
- Form Of Genre: Lyric Poetry
Ballad (Wikipedia)
Wikimedia FoundationOrigins sectionQuote, Origins section
Ballads derive from the medieval French chanson balladée or ballade, which were originally "dancing songs" (L: ballare, to dance), yet becoming "stylized forms of solo song" before being adopted in England.
Richard Holmes, Coleridge: Early Visions (1989)
Richard Holmes, 1989Associated With: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Composed by Coleridge in ballad meter and stanza form for Lyrical Ballads (1798).
Encyclopaedia Britannica
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