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Essay / Research Paper Abstract
A 3 page analysis of three ballads from the late eighteenth century that deal with the topic of murder. The writer argues that these ballads expressed the 'news' of their day, but emphasized moral considerations over factual recitation. Bibliography lists 1 source.
Page Count:
3 pages (~225 words per page)
File: D0_00fkbl.rtf
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Unformatted sample text from the term paper:
in Folk Ballads - June, 2000 - properly! Turn on the nightly news and there is usually
at least one headline story that concerns a brutal, senseless murder-a drive-by shooting, or a quarrel between men at a bar. Occasionally, there are more sensational stories that capture the
headlines for weeks, or even months, such as when middle-class housewife Susan Smith brutally murdered her own children in order to further her chances in a love affair. These stories
are horrible, horrendous, and they make us shudder, yet were still fascinated by this sort of reporting precisely because the behavior is so deviant. Previous eras were just as
intrigued by deviancy, just as fascinated by the horrendous, asking that age-old question of "how could he (or she) do that?" However, previous eras did not have nightly newscasts, radio
news, or even daily newspapers. The ballads that were composed and sung popularized and expressed this part of human experience in those times. For example, "The Cruel Mother" sounds like
an 18th century version of the Susan Smith story. Of course, since folk songs exist in the realm of oral tradition, changing with performance and evolving over time, this form
of "news" tended to keep the sensational details, but in most cases, retained very little reference to what might actually have inspired the song. For example, the lyrics of
"The Cruel Mother" tell us that a lady living in York fell in love with her fathers clerk, "down by the green wood side." In the next two verses, the
ballad describes how she gave a "bitter moan" and then took a long, sharp knife and stabbed her children through the heart. Were not informed as to how the childrens
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