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

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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. IntroductionIn this Essay I shall argue that one can find aspects of moral education in virtuallyevery subgenre of late medieval and renaissance ballads and that this is probablyone of the main functions for the spreading of the ballads. Despite the fact thatthere are no real fixed and approved subgenres of ballads, I am going to divide theballads I am working with into three different subgenres: religious ballads,supernatural ballads and romances, or to be precise, romance ballads. For eachsubgenre, I will present examples, which share common motifs of late medievaland renaissance ballads and can therefore be marked as traditional ballads fromthat specific period. Subsequently, I am going to emphasise on the particularaspect of moral education in the discussed ballad. Even though the content ofmost ballads is not bound to a specific country, respectively culture, but can beidentified in various versions all over the world, mainly Europe and the UnitedStates, I will concentrate on the British versions of particular ballads, taken fromThe Oxford Book of Ballads edited by James Kinsley and published in 1970.

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