English 1310

"A Ballad"
- Keats identifes the poem as a ballad in the title
- A ballad: "a song , transmitted orally, which tells a story [] the narrative species of
folk songs" (abrams)
- Ballade: " a form consisting usually of three stanzas followed by a four-line envoi
(french "send of)" (Greenblatt, Norton)
- Ballad stanza: a 4 line stanza in alternate four - and three-stress lines; usually only the
second and fourth lines rhyme (Abrams)
- Ballad stanza: "Usually a quatrain [four line stanza] in alternating iambic
tetrameter and iambic trimeter lines, rhyming abcb" (Greenblatt, Norton)
- whereas 'romance' was defned by content, 'ballad' tends to be defned by form.
LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI
- Perception
- Characterization
- Uses of nature
- Why the otherworldly?