The Ballad and its Pasts: Literary Histories and the Play of Memory

A new approach to the mysterious ballads, and their relationship with the past.

Katharine Briggs Award 2018: Runner Up

The ballad genre, and its material, are frequently backward-looking in terms of subject and style: it is ideally suited to the reimagining of past events, both real and fictional. This volume addresses the past of the ballad and the past in the ballad. It challenges existing scholarship by embracing discontinuity rather than continuity, seeing the ballad as belonging to a cul...