Department of English

In this seminar we will take a fresh look at the standard collection of traditional ballads in English, Francis James Child's English and Scottish Popular Ballads and consider the influence of these haunting narrative songs upon a range of poets, including Gay, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Swinburne, Hardy, Yeats, Auden, and others. Beginning with the formal connections between these works and issues of revival and imitation, we will go on to consider their representations of tragedy, kinship, the supernatural, and the figure of the poet/singer. Seminar members will write weekly response papers and a final research paper of 15-20 pages.