2000 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary
The Genealogy of the British Literary Ballad with Special Reference to the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Gothic Ballads
| Project/Area Number |
11610499
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
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| Allocation Type | Single-year Grants |
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| Section | 一般 |
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| Research Field |
英語・英米文学
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| Research Institution | Fukuoka Women's University |
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Principal Investigator |
YAMANAKA Mitsuyoshi Fukuoka Women's University, Faculty of Literature, Professor of English, 文学部, 教授 (20047880)
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| Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha) |
NAKASHIMA Hisayo Kyushu Kyoritsu University, Faculty of Economics, Associate Professor of English, 経済学部, 助教授 (90227778)
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| Project Period (FY) |
1999 – 2000
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| Keywords | Traditional Ballad / Literary Ballad / Gothic / Imitation / Deviation / Narrative Technique / Addison / Wordsworth |
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| Research Abstract |
1. Literary history verifies that Joseph Addison at the beginning of the eighteenth century and William Wordsworth at the beginning of the nineteenth paid particular attention to the simplicity of language and the nobility of the human mind inherent in the ballad as a warning against contemporary Gothic taste.
2. Owing to the ballad revival incited by appreciation of the traditional heritage and by the collections of Thomas Percy and others, a large number of literary ballads were composed in imitation of the poetics and subject matter of the traditional ballad. Ironically, however, it has been confirmed that the central axis of deviation in the literary ballad was the explicit presence of Gothic elements.
3. The Gothic motifs innate in the traditional ballad-murder, jealousy, curses, incest, the ghostly and the supernatural-are cleansed of their morbid connotations through objective narrative, while the later poets, attracted by the force of the traditional imagery, deviated from the originals by broadening the scope of the ballad to include abstract and moral dimensions. Nevertheless, it is crucial to observe that the eighteenth and nineteenth century poets attempted a return to narrative objectivity in a range of techniques derived from the traditional ballad.
4. With the current lack of a reliable anthology of literary ballads, 60 poems by 60 poets have been compiled with extensive notes and a full glossary to be published as Sixty English Literary Ballads, nearly half of which are Gothic imitations from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
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