Moral Education as a function of British Folklore in the Form of Late-medieval and Renaissance Ballads

Essay from the year 2012 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 3,0, Ruhr-University of Bochum, language: English, abstract: I. Introduction In this Essay I shall argue that one can find aspects of moral education in virtually every subgenre of late medieval and renaissance ballads and that this is probably one of the main functions for the spreading of the ballads. Despite the fact that there are no real fixed and approved subgenres of ballads, I am going to divide the ballads I am working with into three different subgenres: religious ballads, supernatural ballads and romances, or to be precise, romance ballads. For each subgenre, I will present examples, which share common motifs of late medieval and renaissance ballads and can therefore be marked as traditional ballads from that specific period. Subsequently, I am going to emphasise on the particular aspect of moral education in the discussed ballad. Even though the content of most ballads is not bound to a specific country, respectively culture, but can be identified in various versions all over the world, mainly Europe and the United States, I will concentrate on the British versions of particular ballads, taken from 'The Oxford Book of Ballads' edited by James Kinsley and published in 1970.