The Genealogy of English and Scottish Literary Balladry from the Early Eighteenth Century to the Nineteenth Century

Literary balladry has not been acknowledged as a literary genre as traditional balladry has in the history of English and Scottish literature. This is because the types of imitation are so varied and quite often subtle, and it is rather difficult to define a piece of work as a literary ballad. Therefore, literary balladry has not provided researchers and readers with an adequate amount of texts. As a result, the study of the literary ballad has not fully matured. However, the nineteenth century saw the blossoming of literary balladry when more than 60 poets created over 400 literary ballads. The purpose of this review paper is to provide a rough sketch of the genealogy of English and Scottish literary balladry from the early eighteenth century to the nineteenth century. The paper begins with an introduction of three representative ballad scholars in the twentieth century. As the predecessor of the nineteenth century literary balladists, Lady Elizabeth Wardlaw’s deviation from simple imitation is discussed. In the Romantic era, the sentimentalized tendency of Wordsworth and Keats is stated. Among the Victorian balladists, refrain technicians are outstanding. Tennyson and Rossetti succeeded in expressing the complicated psychology of the narrator with varying some refrains of traditional ballads. But excessive devotion to the ballad technique produced the cultural phenomenon of parody. Trail’s parody ballad shows a critical spirit against blind following of the contemporary popularity of ballad refrain.