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This is a vivid introduction, by two of the foremost scholars in the field, to one of the most fascinating and little-known song traditions in Europe, the Breton gwerz, or ballad. These narrative songs, collected in Western Brittany from the 19th century to the present day, recount a wealth of stories based on tragic local events or legends. They tell of shipwrecks, abductions, accidents and murders, miraculous rescues, penitent souls, and strange journeys. Quite unlike songs from the neighbouring French tradition, and distinct from anything else in the other Celtic languages, these ballads unfold in clear, spare verses, filled with striking imagery: they are often highly dramatic in nature....
The culture of insurgents in early modern Europe was primarily an oral one; memories of social conflicts in the communities affected were passed on through oral forms such as songs and legends. This popular history continued to influence political choices and actions through and after the early modern period. The chapters in this book examine numerous examples from across Europe of how memories of revolt were perpetuated in oral cultures, and they analyse how traditions were used. From the German Peasants’ War of 1525 to the counter-revolutionary guerrillas of the 1790s, oral traditions can offer radically different interpretations of familiar events. This is a ‘history from below’, and a history from song, which challenges existing historiographies of early modern revolts.
This is a vivid introduction, by two of the foremost scholars in the field, to one of the most fascinating and little-known song traditions in Europe, the Breton gwerz, or ballad. These narrative songs, collected in Western Brittany from the 19th century to the present day, recount a wealth of stories based on tragic local events or legends. They tell of shipwrecks, abductions, accidents and murders, miraculous rescues, penitent souls, and strange journeys. Quite unlike songs from the neighbouring French tradition, and distinct from anything else in the other Celtic languages, these ballads unfold in clear, spare verses, filled with striking imagery: they are often highly dramatic in nature....
Across Europe, from the dawn of print until the early twentieth century, the news of crime and criminals' public executions was printed in song form on cheap broadsides and pamphlets to be sold in streets and marketplaces by ballad-singers. Singing the News of Death: Execution Ballads in Europe 1500-1900 looks at how and why song was employed across Europe for centuries as a vehicle for broadcasting news about crime and executions, exploring how this performative medium could frame and mediate the message of punishment and repentance. Examining ballads in English, French, Dutch, German, and Italian across four centuries, author Una McIlvenna offers the first multilingual and longue durée st...
An innovative study revealing that folklore collections can shed new light on the lives of the socially marginalized.
An innovative new reading of the character of, and tensions in, London's radical intellectual culture at the time of the French Revolution.
Women have been represented in art, literature, music, and more for decades, with the image of the woman changing through time and across cultures. However, rarely has a multidisciplinary approach been taken to examine this imagery and challenge and possibly reinterpret old women-related myths and other taken-for-granted aspects (e.g., grammatically inclusive gender). Moreover, this approach can better place the ideologies as myth creators and propagators, identify and deconstruct stereotypes and prejudices, and compare them across cultures with the view to spot universal vs. culturally specific approaches as far as women's studies and interpretations are concerned. It is important to gather...
This collection of thirteen chapters answers new questions about rhyme, with views from folklore, ethnopoetics, the history of literature, literary criticism and music criticism, psychology and linguistics. The book examines rhyme as practiced or as understood in English, Old English and Old Norse, German, Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish and Karelian, Estonian, Medieval Latin, Arabic, and the Central Australian language Kaytetye. Some authors examine written poetry, including modernist poetry, and others focus on various kinds of sung poetry, including rap, which now has a pioneering role in taking rhyme into new traditions. Some authors consider the relation of rhyme to other types of form, notably alliteration. An introductory chapter discusses approaches to rhyme, and ends with a list of languages whose literatures or song traditions are known to have rhyme.
This accessible Companion provides a wide-ranging and comprehensive introduction to French music from the early middle ages to the present.
In Communes and Conflict, Jan Dumolyn and Jelle Haemers explore the urban rebellions that regularly erupted in Flanders between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries. They analyse not only how these rebellions were sparked and repressed, but also how they shaped the culture and identity of Flemish townspeople. Drawing from a wide range of theoretical methods and concepts, including those of discourse analysis, semiotics, speech acts, collective memory and material cultural studies, the authors return to key Marxist questions on ideology, labour and class interest to map the perspectives of the rebels, the urban patriciate and the Flemish and Burgundian nobility.