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BACCHIUS ( ba-KEE-us)
In classical poetry, a metrical
foot
consisting of a short
syllable
followed by two long syllables.
BALLAD
A short
narrative
poem with stanzas of two or four lines and usually a
refrain.
The story of a ballad can originate from a wide range of subject
matter but frequently deals with folk-lore or popular legends. The
plot is the dominant element, dealing with a single crucial
episode, narrated impersonally, with frequent use of
repetition. They are written in straight-forward verse, seldom
with detail, but always with graphic simplicity and force. Most
ballads are suitable for singing and, while sometimes varied in
practice, are generally written in ballad meter, i.e.,
alternating lines of
iambic
tetrameter and iambic
trimeter,
with the last words of the second and fourth lines
rhyming,
an xbyb
rhyme
scheme.
Sidelight: Many old-time ballads were written and performed by
minstrels attached to noblemen's courts.
Folk
ballads are of unknown origin and are usually lacking in
artistic finish. Meant to be sung, but often studied as poetry,
the texts are independent of the melodies, which are often used
for a number of different ballads. Because they are handed down
by oral tradition, folk ballads are subject to variations and
continual change. Other types of ballads include those
transferred from rural to urban settings, and literary
ballads, combining the natures of
epic and
lyric
poetry, which are written by known authors, often in the
style
and form
of the folk ballad, such as Keats' "La
Belle Dame sans Merci" or Scott's "Jock
o' Hazeldean."
(See also
Broadside Ballad,
Lay,
Tragedy)
(Compare
Chanson de Geste,
Common Measure,
Epopee,
Epos,
Heroic Quatrain)
BALLADE (ba-LAHD)
Frequently represented in French poetry, a fixed
form
consisting of three seven or eight-line
stanzas
using no more than three recurrent
rhymes,
with an identical
refrain
after each stanza and a closing
envoi
repeating the rhymes of the last four lines of the stanza. A
variation containing six stanzas is called a double ballade.
Sidelight: The ballade was prominent in French literature from
the 14th to the 16th century and was favored by many poets,
including Francois Villon, for example, in poems such as "Des
Dames du Temps Jadis." In the nineteenth century it was
popular with poets like Verlaine and Baudelaire. In English
literature, Chaucer wrote ballades and some late-nineteenth
century poets also used the form.
(Compare
Chant
Royale)
BALLAD METER
See
Ballad
BARD
An ancient composer, singer or declaimer of
epic
verse.
Sidelight: Today the term is popularly applied to poets of
significant repute as a title of honor, with
William
Shakespeare being known as "The Bard of Avon" and
Robert Burns
as "The Bard of Ayrshire."
(See also
Metrist,
Poet,
Sonneteer,
Versifier,
Wordsmith)
(Compare
Minstrel,
Troubadour)
BAROQUE (buh-ROHK)
An elaborate, extravagantly complex, sometimes grotesque,
style of artistic expression prevalent in the late 16th to early
18th centuries. The baroque influence on poetry was expressed by
Euphuism
in England,
Marinism
in Italy, and
Gongorism
in Spain.
BATHOS
An unintentional shift from the sublime to the ridiculous
which can result from the use of overly elevated language to
describe trivial subject matter, or from an exaggerated attempt at
pathos
which misfires to the point of being ludicrous. Bathos can be
viewed as an unintentional
anticlimax.
BEAST FABLE or BEAST EPIC
See under
Fable
BINARY METER
A meter
which has two
syllables
per foot,
as in iambic,
trochaic,
pyrrhic,
and
spondaic meters. Binary meters are sometimes referred to as
duple or double meters.
(Compare
Ternary Meter)
BLANK VERSE
Poetry written without
rhymes,
but which retains a set
metrical
pattern, usually
iambic
pentameter (five iambic feet per line) in English verse. Since
it is a very flexible
form, the
writer not being hampered in the expression of thought or
syntactic
structure by the need to rhyme, it is used extensively in
narrative
and
dramatic poetry. In
lyric
poetry, blank verse is adaptable to lengthy descriptive and
meditative poems. An example of blank verse is found in the
well-known lines from Act 4, Scene 1 of Shakespeare's
The
Merchant of Venice:
The qua | lity | of mer | cy is | not strain'd,
It drop | peth as | the gen | tle rain | from heaven
Upon | the place | beneath; | it is | twice blessed:
It bles | seth him | that gives | and him | that takes;
Sidelight: Blank verse and
free
verse are often misunderstood or confused. A good way to
remember the difference is to think of the word blank as
meaning that the ends of the lines where rhymes would normally
appear are "blank," i.e., devoid of rhyme; the free in
free verse refers to the freedom from fixed patterns of
traditional
versification.
(See also
Verse Paragraph)
BOUTS-RIMES (boo-REEM)
An 18th century parlor game in which a list of rhyming words
was drawn up and handed to the players, who had to make a poem
from the list keeping the rhymes in their original order.
(See also
Crambo)
BRETON LAY
See Lay
BROADSIDE BALLAD
A ballad
written in
doggerel, printed on a single piece of paper and sold for a
penny or two on English street corners in the late 16th and early
17th centuries. The name of the tune to which they were to be sung
was indicated on the sheet. The subject matter of broadside
ballads covered a wide range of current, historical, or simply
curious events and also extended to moral exhortations and
religious propaganda.
Sidelight: The rogue, Autolycus, in Shakespeare's The
Winter's Tale, is a peddler whose wares include broadside
ballads.
BROKEN RHYME
Also called split rhyme, a
rhyme
produced by dividing a word at the line break to make a rhyme with
the end word of another line. In Hopkins' "The
Windhover," for example, he divided kingdom at the end
of the first line to rhyme with the word wing ending the
fourth line.
BUCOLIC
Derived from the Greek word for herdsman, an ancient term for
a poem dealing with a
pastoral subject.
(See also
Arcadia,
Eclogue,
Idyll,
Madrigal)
BURDEN
The central topic or principle idea, often repeated in a
refrain.
(See also
Motif,
Theme)
BURLESQUE
A work which is intended to ridicule by the use of grotesque
exaggeration or by the treatment of a trifling subject with the
gravity due a matter of great importance.
(See also
Hudibrastic Verse,
Lampoon,
Mock Epic,
Parody,
Pasquinade,
Satire)
(Compare
Antiphrasis,
Irony,
Purple
Patch)
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