Professor: Patricia Fumerton
Time: TR 12:00-1:12
Office Hours: 2720 South Hall
Place: SH 1635 1:30-2:30 T/R and by appt.
DESCRIPTION:
We will study the culture of the most published and most read of literary forms in early modern England: the broadside ballad. In the first half of the course, we will situate ballads within their historical, political, social, and aesthetic contexts. We will read a sampling of ballads of the period together with critical works about them, and consider the kinds of persons who wrote and published ballads, as well as the nature of ballad music (tunes and refrains), formal features of the ballads (woodblock images, blackletter print, meter), practices of circulation, and some recurrent themes popular in the period. In the second half of the course, we shall enter workshop mode, focusing on reading, analyzing, and mounting online annotated transcriptions of some of the 1,775 ballads in the important Samuel Pepys collection. As part of this “hands on” approach, excursions to the UCSB library and to the Huntington library will be offered. The workshop part of the course will involve students in the Early Modern Center’s ongoing enterprise to create an unprecedented English Ballad Archive, 1500-1800, beginning with the ballads collected by Pepys. Assignments: Two oral and written reports on a facet of ballad culture generally and on a ballad theme in the Pepys collection (6-10 minutes; 2-3 pages each) as well as online annotated transcriptions of two Pepys ballads .
REQUIREMENTS:
Regular attendance and participation.
Two oral reports (5-7 mins.), the first on a topic related to a facet of ballad print culture, and the second on a ballad theme from volume 1 of the Pepys collection.
Two papers (2-3 pp.) based on your oral presentations. The first is due immediately after your presentation; the second is due Thursday, December 2.
Transcription into modern (roman) print from blackletter print of two Pepys ballads from volume 1 of his collection (one transcription should be of a ballad for which there is an already transcribed version in the Hyder Rollins selected edition of the Pepys ballads, in the EMC, and one transcription should be of a ballad that has never been transcribed); also completion of the catalogue entries for those two ballads. Due by Thursday, December 2.
TEXTS:
Tessa Watt, Cheap Print and Popular Piety, 1550-1650, available in the UCSB bookstore (3 copies will also be available in the EMC)
Two Readers , Reader 1 of selected ballads (*) and Reader 2 of criticism about ballads (**), available from the Alternative Copy shop, Isla Vista
CALENDAR:
Sept. 23 R GENERAL INTRODUCTION TO COURSE
EMC and UCSB Online Resources
28 T INTRODUCTION TO PRINT
Adrian Jones,“Introduction,” The Nature of the Book, pp. 1-57 (handout)
REPORTS #1-5: on sections from Jones, chapter 2, “Literatory Life: The Culture and Credibility of the Printed Book in Early Modern London,” pp. 58-74, 74-108, 108-136, 136-60, 160-86 (handouts)
30 R PUBLISHING BLACKLETTER BALLADS
Hyder E. Rollins, “The Black-Letter Broadside Ballad,” pp. 258-339 (handout)
Selected Ballads (handout; pp. 1-11 of Reader I, hereafter *)
REPORTS #6-8: on Tessa Watt, Cheap Print, pp. 39-73, 74-127, 257-95
Oct. 5 T AUDIENCE AND CIRCULATION OF BALLADS
Garret Sullivan and Linda Woodbridge, “Popular Culture in Print,” pp. 264-86**
Margaret Spufford, “Elementary Education and the Acquisition of Reading Skills,” pp. 19-43**
Ballads, pp. 12-30*
7 R CONTEMPORARY ATTITUDES TO BALLADS
Henry Chettle, “The Friendly Admonition of Anthonie Now now,” pp. 15-23**
Natascha Wurzbach, “Reputation of the Street Ballad,” pp. 242-52**
Ballads, pp. 31-47*
[Additional Report, if needed on the Ballad Author, Martin Parker; essays available by Hyder Rollins]
12 T ORALITY AND PERFORMANCE
Wurzbach, selections from “Literary and Social Conditions for the Rise, Distribution and Textual Structure of the Street Ballad” (35 pages)**
Ballads, pp. 48-62*
14 R TUNES AND MUSIC
Watt, Cheap Print, pp. 11-39
Ballads, pp. 63-76*
REPORTS #9-10 on selections from volumes 1 and 2, respectively, of W. Chappell, Popular Music of the Olden Time (in EMC)
19 T FORMAL FEATURES
Watt on Illustrations, Cheap Print, pp. 131-216
Ballads, pp. 77-94*
REPORTS #11-15 on paper making, blackletter print, woodblocks (including broadside Cries), other ornaments (see Introduction to Pepys Catalogue**), and ballad measure
21 R MONSTERS AND WONDERS
Mark Booth, “Broadside: ‘Description of a Strange Fish,” pp. 97-113**
Ballads, pp. 95-119*
26 T ALEHOUSE BALLADS
Patricia Fumerton, “Not Home: Alehouses, Ballads, and the Vagrant Husband in Early Modern England” (25 pages)**
Ballads, pp. 120-143*
28 R “GOOD NIGHT BALLADS”: HUSBAND MURDERS
Kirilka Stavreva, “Scaffolds into Prints: Executing the Insubordinate Wife in the Ballad Trade of Early Modern England (11 pages)**
Ballads, pp. 144-167*
Nov. 2 T TRANSGRESSIVE POWER: Wayward Kings, Robin Hood, and Warrior Women
Chappell, “Robin Hood,” p. 387-400**
Diane Dugaw, “Popular Balladry, Mary Ambree, and the Beginnings of the Female Warrior Motif” and “The Fashion for Female Warrior Ballads: New ‘Hits’ and Old Favorites, 1650-1800,” pp. 15-64**
Ballads, pp. 167-196*
WORKSHOP PART OF THE COURSE
4 R UCSB LIBRARY TOUR
Conducted by Jane Faulkner (Coordinator for Instructional Services, English and French Literature Librarian, Davidson Library, UCSB)
9 T INTRODUCTION TO THE PEPYS BALLADS
Read “Introduction,” Catalogue to facsimile edition of Pepys Ballads, pp. xv-lxii**
Students in this class will choose to work on one of the theme-grouped ballads in the first volume of Pepys’s ballad collection. The ballad groups are: “Devotion and Morality” (2 students will divide these ballads between them); “History”; “Tragedy” (2 students will divide these ballads between them); “State and Times” (2 students will divide these ballads between them); “Love Pleasant” together with “Sea” ballads; “Love Unfortunate”; “Marriage and Cuckoldry”; “Drinking and Good Fellowship”; “Humors, Frolicks”; and, finally, “Small Promiscuous Supplement” (3 students will divide these ballads between them). Each student will read all the ballads in their group (or their share of the ballads, if they are dividing up a grouping), and will transcribe two of the ballads as well as add to the catalogue entries already written about those two ballads. The first transcription can be aided by choosing a ballad transcription version already made by Rollins in his selected modernized edition of the Pepys ballads; the second transcription must be original. In addition, each student must write a brief (2-3 page) paper arguing a thesis about the thematic group they have been studying. In the case of those students sharing a group of ballads, they may choose to make their essays a collaborative effort (in which case the essay must be somewhat longer: 4-5 pages in the case of two students working together; 6-7 pages in the case of three students working together).
11 R HOLIDAY
16 T WORKSHOP
In-class work on transcribing ballads
18 R WORKSHOP
In-class work on transcribing ballads
******19 F HUNTINGTON LIBRARY TRIP
Travel to view original Britwell ballads and other early modern broadsides in the Huntington library’s holdings; presentation at 1 pm. by Stephen Tabor, Curator of Early Printed Books
23 T THE PROBLEMS OF TRANSCRIPTION/CATALOGUING
Discussion of the difficulties of and solutions to providing a modern transcription and full cataloguing of the ballads
25 R THANKSGIVING HOLIDAY
30 T PEPYS GROUP REPORTS
Dec. 2 R PEPYS GROUP REPORTS
SECOND PAPER DUE
