Overview

Often ignored or given only cursory review, the medieval ballads represent the literature of the commoner, the largest population segment of the time. Far from being merely inexpert ditties, the ballads express the bleak and pragmatic world view of the peasant and laborer, and later the social aspirations of the new yeoman class. In doing so, they mount an attack against aristocratic ideologies of chivalry, courtly love, and the tripartite society on the philosophical and metaphoric levels. Gwendolyn Morgan's reading of the ballads of chivalry in this light leads to a new understanding of balladry's place in the English literary tradition and shatters the image of monolithic Golden Age of Faith.

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9780820420424

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Reviews

It is rare to find lucidly written and well-argued scholarship. The clarity of Gwendolyn A. Morgan's 'Medieval Balladry and the Courtly Tradition' makes it a pleasure to read. Insofar as the books's subtitle 'Literature of Revolt and Assimulation', informs her thesis, Morgan cogently demonstrates how rural medieval English ballads illustrate the rift between peasants and aristocrats, as well as yeoman aspirations to gentility and comfort. (Loren C. Gruber, In Geardagum) This stimulating study of the social milieu in which ballds of the medieval period flourished points out many things which readers of the ballads overlook. (Ray Browne, Journal of Popular Culture)

Author Information

The Author: Gwendolyn Morgan is Professor of Medieval and British Literature and Language at Montana State University. She received her B.A. from McGill University and studied at York University and the University of South Florida, receiving her Ph.D. from the latter. She has published articles on medieval and Anglo-Saxon literature in a variety of professional journals and books, and others on popular culture. Dr. Morgan is currently producing an anthology of imitative translations on the Anglo-Saxon minor poems with Brian McAllister and a collection of essays, Reading and Writing in the New Middle Ages, with rhetorician David Metzger.

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