Tuesday, March 27, 2012

11th Ballads and Sonnetts



Ballad= song or poem that tells a story in short verses and simple words
Like country western songs
Tell of fate of lovers (usually tragic)
Sensational crimes
Dangers of the working life
Historical disasters

First ballads appeared during the 12th century. First were oral tradition.

Folk ballad = narrative poem intended to be sung and without a known author

Characteristics of a ballad
Four-line stanzas in which the second and fourth lines rhyme
Repeated key phrases or a regularly repeated section, called a refrain
Dialogue

Dialect = form of language spoken by people in a particular region or group

Common theme of ballads
Death by murder or accident
Tragic and bloody

The Two Corbies
Young knight lies slain, unmourned by his hawk, hound or lady love
Story unfolds through a conversation between two ravens

Lord Randall

Get Up and Bar the Door
Humorous
Husband and wife bicker
Robbers

Barbara Allan
Graeme on his death bead



Sonnet = fourteen-line lyric poem with a single theme
Each line is usually in iambic pentameter - five groups of two syllables
Accent on second syllable

Petrarchan sonnet = octave rhyming abba abba and sestet rhyming cdecde

Spenserian sonnet = rhyme abab bcbc cdcdee

Shakespearean sonnet = rhyme scheme abab cdcd efef gg
3 quatrains (four-line stanzas)
Rhyming couplet - often a dramatic statement that resolves, restates, or redefines the central problem of the sonnet


Sir Thomas More - Utopia
Heroic monarch

Elizabeth I - Speech Before Her Troops

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