Ballad - Literary Terms
Ballad - Literary Terms
A ballad is a short narrative poem that ordinarily employs a stanza of four lines, alternately of four and three stressed syllables, with only the second and fourth lines rhyming. Ballads typically tell stories of unhappy love affairs, domestic tragedies, especially family feuds and murders, and of popular outlaws and rebels. They also tell stories of historical events like battles, shipwrecks, and mine disasters, and sometimes of occupational heroes.
Ballads are of three types: The folk ballad, the broadside ballad, and the literary or art ballad. The folk ballad is one of the earliest forms of literature. It is composed anonymously and transmitted orally from generation to generation. It was originally meant for singing or reciting. Folk ballads have been set down in writing only in fairly recent times. Certain characteristics are common: dealing with common people, use of the supernatural, use of dialogue, emphasis on action, use of refrain and incremental repetition, simple language and pronounced rhythm. F.J. Child's English and Scottish Popular Ballads, and B.H. Bronson's The Traditional Tunes of the child Ballads, are famous.
A broadside ballad is printed on one side of a single sheet. It deals with a current event, and is sung to a well-known tune.
Literary ballads are written by well-known authors. So they are more polished and artful and in elevated language. Keats's "La Belle Dame Sans Merci” and Coleridge's “The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner” are famous ballads of this type.
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