The Anglo-Scottish Ballad and its Imaginary Contexts - cover image

Copyright

David Atkinson

Published On

2014-03-12

ISBN

Paperback978-1-78374-027-7
Hardback978-1-78374-028-4
PDF978-1-78374-029-1
HTML978-1-80064-468-7
EPUB978-1-78374-030-7
MOBI978-1-78374-031-4

Language

  • English

Print Length

226 pages (xvi + 210)

Dimensions

Paperback156 x 12 x 234 mm(6.14" x 0.48" x 9.21")
Hardback156 x 14 x 234 mm(6.14" x 0.56" x 9.21")

Weight

Paperback721g (25.43oz)
Hardback1100g (38.80oz)

Media

Illustrations11
Tables2

OCLC Number

1193032532

LCCN

2019467793

BIC

  • DS
  • DSB

BISAC

  • LIT004120
  • LIT000000

LCC

  • PR507

Keywords

  • Ballads
  • ballad studies
  • folk songs
  • oral transmission
  • textual scholarship
  • critique génétique

The Anglo-Scottish Ballad and its Imaginary Contexts

  • David Atkinson (author)
This is the first book to combine contemporary debates in ballad studies with the insights of modern textual scholarship. Just like canonical literature and music, the ballad should not be seen as a uniquely authentic item inextricably tied to a documented source, but rather as an unstable structure subject to the vagaries of production, reception, and editing. Among the matters addressed are topics central to the subject, including ballad origins, oral and printed transmission, sound and writing, agency and editing, and textual and melodic indeterminacy and instability. While drawing on the time-honoured materials of ballad studies, the book offers a theoretical framework for the discipline to complement the largely ethnographic approach that has dominated in recent decades. Primarily directed at the community of ballad and folk song scholars, the book will be of interest to researchers in several adjacent fields, including folklore, oral literature, ethnomusicology, and textual scholarship.

Endorsements

The depth of Atkinson's research is impressive and his conclusions will provide ballad scholars with much food for thought. The author quite elegantly makes the case for an interaction between written and oral transmission of ballads for over half a millennium, effectively challenging many of the received tropes of ballad studies.

James Revell Carr

University of North Carolina at Greensboro

Reviews

Honoured with the Folklore Society’s Katharine Briggs Award for 2014, David Atkinson’s latest book is an intellectually alert, extensively documented [...]. The Anglo-Scottish Ballad and its Imaginary Contexts is out of the ordinary in relation to ballad studies.

Tom Pettitt

"The Anglo-Scottish Ballad and its Imaginary Contexts". Folklore (0015-587X), vol. 129, no. 1, 2018. doi:10.1080/0015587X.2017.1400817

Full Review

Contents

  • David Atkinson
  • David Atkinson

The Material Ballad

(pp. 69–88)
  • David Atkinson

Sound and Writing

(pp. 89–118)
  • David Atkinson
  • David Atkinson

Contributors

David Atkinson

(author)
Honorary Research Fellow at the Elphinstone Institute at University of Aberdeen