The Perilous Hunt: Symbols in Hispanic and European Balladry

In the symbolic language of ballads, a lady's costly dress tells of the beauty of the body beneath it or of the wearer's happiness; a lost hawk or hound foreshadows the hunter's fate long before the plot reaches a turning point. In her original and far-reaching study of such familiar narrative elements, Edith Randam Rogers adds much to our understanding of poetic expression in the ballad tradition.

In focusing on individual motifs as they appear in different ballads, different languages, and...