ENGLISH 832

ORALITY AND THE LITERARY MARKETPLACE:

THE BALLAD REVIVAL AND ROBERT BURNS

SPRING 2009 – 1091

Leith Davis

email: leith@sfu.ca

Office hours on Surrey campus: Wednesday, 4:30-5:20 and by appointment

COURSE DESCRIPTION

REQUIRED TEXTS

ASSIGNMENTS/EVALUATION

COURSE OUTLINE

COURSE DESCRIPTION

            One of the ironies remarked upon by critics of the eighteenth century is that the growth of the literary marketplace and the development of a print-based culture were accompanied by a rediscovery of the oral tradition of ballads and songs, albeit in a highly mediated form.  This course will examine key texts of the eighteenth-century ballad revival as well as the work of the Scottish poet Robert Burns. We will study, among other works: the ballad of “Chevy Chase”; Elizabeth Wardlaw’s Hardiknute; John Gay’s Beggar’s Opera; Allan Ramsay's Tea-Table Miscellany and Gentle Shepherd; James Macpherson's poems of Ossian, allegedly written by a third-century Scottish bard; Bishop Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, which postulates a chivalric order of Teutonic minstrels; David Herd’s Ancient and Modern Scots Songs; and Joseph Ritson's Scotish Songs [sic]. These works will be supplemented by essays concerning orality, print culture and the public sphere in the eighteenth century. We will then move to Burns's Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect and his later contributions to collections of Scottish song.  Experimenting in various ways with features of oral poetry, Burns sought to insert his own poetry into the existing market system and also to change the terms of literary exchange and value that constituted that system. We will consider the consequences of this literary hybridity for Burns's self-construction and for his interventions in the world of belles lettres: he experienced a few years of fame, then was relegated to the margins of English literature as an example of failed genius. A final section of the course will examine the influence of ballads and Burns's songs in a transatlantic context.  At issue throughout the course will be the intersection of constructions of gender and of the nation with the above concerns regarding orality and the literary marketplace. In particular, we will consider: the ballad's shift from what Catherine Kerrigan and others see as a female realm of activity, occupying an ambiguous position between private and public domains, to the male-dominated public realm of print culture, and the uses of the rediscovered ballads in imagining the communities in Britain and North America. Because the course is concerned with forms of orality, listening to (and occasionally singing) ballads, songs and poems will be an important part of our work.

REQUIRED TEXTS

Please try to obtain The Canongate Burns, ed. Andrew Noble and Patrick Scott Hogg, if possible. If you are unable to obtain a copy, Carol McGuirk’s Penguin edition of Burns or James Kinsley’s Poems and Songs of Burns will also suffice.

Note: many of the works we are using are available on ECCO, Google Scholar or Google Books. Please bring either a hard copy or electronic copy to class for reference.

ASSIGNMENTS/EVALUATION

Seminars (2 x 15%) = 30%

Participation (including online) and attendance: 10%

Final Paper (18 pp.) due April 7 by 7 p.m.: 60% 

Note: for the final paper, please submit a paragraph describing your projected topic with a bibliography of sources you intend to use by March 25.

COURSE OUTLINE

 Week One: January 7

Introduction: Orality and/or Literacy: The Case of the Eighteenth-Century Ballad in Scotland and England

“Lamkin” : note: just read the poem, not the article attached

and “The Twa Sisters”

Critical Reading:

Walter Ong, “Literacy and Orality in Our Times,” Journal of Communication 30:1 (1980), pp. 197–204 (available through Google Scholar)

Dianne Dugaw, “On the ‘Darling Songs’ of Poets, Scholars, and Singers: An Introduction,” The Eighteenth Century 47:2/3 (2006), pp. 97-114 (available through Google Scholar) 

Week Two: Sunday, January 11

(Note: this is make up class)

“Chevy Chase”: facsimile is at: http://emc.english.ucsb.edu/ballad_project/ballad_image.asp?id=20279

Facsimile transcription

If you have trouble understanding either of these, you might want to check out the following web resource, which is not a scholarly source, but which is nonetheless useful and which also provides basic tunes for many ballads): http://www.contemplator.com/child/chevych.html

Elizabeth Wardlaw, Hardiknute. A fragment of an old heroick ballad [Edinburgh], [1724?] (on ECCO)

Allan Ramsay, “Hardyknute A Fragment” in The ever green, being a collection of Scots poems, wrote by the ingenious before 1600, Vol. 2, pp. 147-264 (on ECCO)

Take note of the differences between Wardlaw’s and Ramsay’s versions. Ramsay adds a number of stanzas to the original.

Note on orthography: Both Wardlaw’s and Ramsay’s versions use eighteenth-century orthography in which “s” is often represented by what looks like “f.” This may be difficult to figure out at first, but after reading enough eighteenth-century texts, you will find yourselves making the translation quite easily. Also, Ramsay’s version uses the phoneme “quh” for “wh,” eg. “quhen” for “when” and “z” for “y,” eg “zit” for “yet” in order to give his version an even more ancient feeling, as this was orthography common in the days of the Scottish Chaucerians, the “makers.” If you have trouble with either of both of these, you might want to check out the following web resource which uses Percy’s version:

http://www.auburn.edu/~downejm/hardyknute.html

Critical Reading:

Mel Kersey, “Ballads, Britishness and Hardyknute, 1719-1859,” Scottish Studies Review 5 (2005); pp. 40-56 (available through Google Scholar)

Week Two: January 14

Instructor away

Week Three: January 21

Instructor away

Please view John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera (a BBC-TV production in association with RM Arts) either in class in my absence or from the media library. Also, please read and discuss online:

Ruth Perry, "’The Finest Ballads’: Women's Oral Traditions in Eighteenth-Century Scotland,” 32:2 (Spring 2008); pp. 81-97  (available through Google Scholar)

Paula McDowell, "The Manufacture and Lingua-facture of Ballad-Making": Broadside Ballads in Long Eighteenth-Century Ballad Discourse,” The Eighteenth Century 47:2/3 (2006); 151-178 (available through Google Scholar)

Week Four: January 28

John Gay, The beggar’s opera. As it is acted at the Theatre-Royal in Lincoln’s-Inn-Fields. Written by Mr. Gay. The third edition. Dublin, 1728 (available on ECCO)

Critical Reading:

Suzanne Aspden, “Ballads and Britons: Imagined Community and the Continuity of 'English' Opera,” Journal of the Royal Musical Association, Vol. 122, No. 1 (1997), pp. 24-51 (available through Google Scholar)

Week Five: Feb. 4

Allan Ramsay

Allan Ramsay, “Dedication To Ilka Lovely British Lass,” “Preface” and “Bonny Christy” from The tea-table miscellany: or, a collection of scots sangs. In three volumes. The ninth edition (London, 1733) (available through ECCO); The gentle shepherd: a Scots pastoral-comedy. By Allan Ramsay (London, 1730) (available through ECCO)

Critical Reading:

Steve Newman,  “The Scots Songs of Allan Ramsay: 'Lyrick' Transformation, Popular Culture, and the Boundaries of the Scottish Enlightenment,” Modern Language Quarterly: A Journal of Literary History 63:3 (2002), pp. 277-314 (available through Google Scholar)  

Murray Pittock, “Allan Ramsay and the Decolonisation of Genre,” The Review of English Studies 58: 235 (2007), pp. 316-337 (available through Google Scholar)

Week Six: Feb. 11

The Poems of Ossian

James Macpherson, Fingal, an ancient epic poem, in six books: together with several other poems, composed by Ossian the son of Fingal. Translated from the Galic (London, 1762) (available through ECCO)

Critical Reading:

James Porter, “'Bring Me the Head of James Macpherson' The Execution of Ossian and the Wellspring of Folkloristic Discourse,” Journal of American Folklore 114:454 (2001), pp. 396-435 (available through Google Scholar)

Week Seven: Feb. 18

Ballad Collections

Thomas Percy, “The Preface,” “Essay on the Ancient English Minstrels,” “Edward, Edward,” and “Sir Patrick Spence” in Vol. 1 of Reliques of ancient English poetry: consisting of old heroic ballads, songs, and other pieces of our earlier poets (London, 1765) (available through ECCO);

David Herd, “Preface,” “Gil Morrice” in Ancient and modern Scottish songs, heroic ballads, etc. In two volumes (Edinburgh, 1776) (available through ECCO);

Joseph Ritson, “Preface” in Scotish song in two volumes. Volume the first (London, MDCCXIV [1794]) (available through ECCO);

Critical Reading:

Janet Sorensen, “Orality's Silence: The Other Ballad Revival” available at:

 Maureen McLane “Dating Orality, Thinking Balladry: Of Milkmaids and Minstrels in 1771,” The Eighteenth Century 47:2 (2006), 131-49 (available through Google Scholar)

Week Eight: Feb. 25 Cancelled due to Snow

Week Nine: March 4

Robert Burns, Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect

Read the following poems in the edition that you have. Also, look at them in the edition on ECCO: Poems, chiefly in the Scottish dialect, by Robert Burns (Kilmarnock, 1786).

Preface

The Twa Dogs

The Author’s Earnest Cry and Prayer . . .

The Holy Fair

Address to the Deil

The Death and Dying Words of Poor Mailie

A Dream

The Vision

Halloween

The Cottar’s Saturday Night

To a Mouse

Despondency. An Ode

Man Was Made to Mourn. A Dirge.

To a Mountain-Daisy

On A Scotch Bard Gone to the West Indies

Epistle to J. L*****k, An Old Scotch Bard

The Farewell to the Brethren of St. James’s Lodge, Tarbolton

A Bard’s Epitaph

Critical Reading:

Robert Crawford, “British Burns” from Devolving English Literature (PDF)

Jeremy Smith, “Copia Verborum: The Linguistic Choices of Robert Burns,” Review of English Studies 58:233 (2007), pp. 73-88 (available through Google Scholar)

Week Ten: March 11

Burns’s Songs

Please read the following in the edition which you have:

The Rigs o’ Barley

Green Grow the Rashes, O

Song, Composed in August

Ca’ The Yowes

Auld Lang Syne

Ye Jacobites By Name

Such a Parcel of Rogues in a Nation

Robert Bruce’s March to Bannockburn

A Man’s a Man

Critical Reading:

Kirsteen McCue, “Burns, Women and Song,” in Robert Burns and Cultural Authority, ed. Robert Crawford (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1997), pp. 40-57 (PDF) 

Peter Murphy, “Robert Burns” from Poetry as an Occupation and an Art (PDF)

Week Eleven: March 18

“Tam O’Shanter” in Alloway kirk; or Tam o’Shanter. A tale. By Robert Burns ([Glasgow], [1796])

“Love and Liberty”

“Why Should Na Poor Folk Mowe”

“Ode to Spring”

Critical Reading:

Murray Pittock, “Robert Burns” from Scottish and Irish Romanticism (PDF)

Liam McIllvanney, “’The Democracy of Sex’: Burns’s Bawdry” from Burns the Radical: Poetry and Politics in Late Eighteenth-Century Scotland (PDF)

Week Twelve: March 25

The Afterlives of Burns

James Currie, “To Captain Graham Moore” (pp. v-x) and “Prefatory Remarks on the Character and Condition of the Scottish Peasantry” (pp. 1-33) in The Works of Robert Burns, vol. 1 (London: T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1803) (available to download from Google Books)

William Wordsworth, “Letter to a Friend of Robert Burns” (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown, 1816) (available to download from Google Books)

Critical Reading:

Ann Rigney, “Plenitude, Scarcity and the Circulation of Cultural Memory,” Journal of European Studies 35:1 (2005), 11-28 (available through Google Scholar)

Carol McGuirk, “Haunted by Authority: Nineteenth-century American constructions of Robert Burns,” in Robert Burns and Cultural Authority (PDF)

Week 13: April 1

Transatlantic Burns: lecture

Ceilidh: bring a poem, song, picture, anecdote, etc. inspired by a text or idea from the course.

Final papers are due by 7 p.m. on April 7, 2009. 

Also, you are all welcome to attend the following special event, organized by Leith Davis (SFU’s Centre for Scottish Studies), Holly Faith Nelson (Trinity Western University) and Sharon Alker (Whitman College). Many of the critics whom we are reading this semester will be attending.

Conference on Transatlantic Burns

April 7-9, 2009