Ballad Collection, Lyric, and the Canon: The Call of the Popular from the Restoration to the New Criticism

by Steve Newman

The humble ballad, defined in 1728 as "a song commonly sung up and down the streets," was widely used in elite literature in the eighteenth century and beyond. Authors ranging from John Gay to William Blake to Felicia Hemans incorporated the seemingly incongruous genre of the ballad into their work. Ballads were central to the Scottish Enlightenment's theorization of culture and nationality, to Shakespeare's canonization in the eighteenth century,...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 081224009X
• ISBN13: 9780812240092
• Release Date: May 2007
• Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 1.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.2" x 9.1"