FOLK 1000 Lecture Notes - Lecture 15: Francis James Child, Child Ballads
7 Mar 2017
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Learning objectives: to identify the main types of folksong: classical ballad, broadside ballad, native. American (or modern) ballad, and lyrical folksong: to describe ways in which singers select and modify folksongs to represent their particular worldviews. One of the earliest interest of folklore. First researcher tried to define folksong in terms of its origins and developed a theory of communal creation that has since been abandoned. Songs transmitted mainly by oral means undergo change, producing textual and musical variation. Geroud: tell a story with stress on the crucial situation, tell it by letting the action unfold itself in even and speech, tell it objectively with little comment or intrusion of personal bias. Characteristics include: no narrator, no moralizing, or great demonstration of sentimentality, action proceeds on its own. Impersonally & objectively: plot leaps and lingers in the way that drama, cinema, or folktale does.
