Ballads: History, Origins, and Characteristics
The Old Ballad:
Literary Genre: Ballads, an old form, are a set of romances that were sung in the late Middle Ages. Some examples have survived from the 15th century and especially the 16th. Old ballads have a dual nature: they are a genre of oral origin and popularity in the late Middle Ages, but they are also subject to the conventions of written texts, since they were compiled at the dawn of the Renaissance era, which saw a revaluation of popular forms. This revaluation continued through the 16th and 17th centuries. The corpus of romances written by esteemed poets constitutes the new ballads. Modern oral ballads are a vast collection of ballads from oral tradition, collected since the late 19th century to the present day.
Origin of the Romance: The origin of the romances in the late Middle Ages seems to be in the decomposition of the great epics. The initial hemistiches would have resulted in the odd lines without rhyme in romances, while assonant pairs of these would come from the second hemistich of the verses of the epic and hence retain the rhyme. The origin of the romances as fragmentation of the chansons de geste would also explain the abundance of epic themes in the old ballads. There is not always a clear distinction between lyric and narrative ballads. There are many features that connect the romance to the songs of the traditional lyric. Romance can be defined as an epic-lyric genre.
Structural and Formal Features: These features are very much conditioned by the mode of oral transmission and that origin which once lumped with the song and popular epics. They demonstrate the ductility of romance, the active and creative transmission of texts, the importance of motives, both formal and thematic, and the existence of a traditional style. The constant recreation of romances during oral dissemination means that the same romance may have numerous and very varied versions. The romances are adapted to the environment where they are spread, and historical names may disappear or be altered. The most common formal means of romances are the replicates, enumerations, the antithesis, the alternation of tenses, the use of formulas and epic epithets, archaic language, the updating of the action by the adverb and/or the historic present, the frequent dialogues, syntactic simplicity, and the absence of complex similes and metaphors. Romances are characterized by their apparent clarity and simplicity. The expressive and dramatic power of romance is achieved through concentration, concision, stylistic compression, and emotional suggestion. The romances are open narrative structures, with a variety of themes and motifs.
Sense of Romance: Vision of the World: The oral conditions influence the formal and structural peculiarities of the texts, and their own vision of the world. Adaptive capacity is characteristic of the romance from its inception. With the disappearance of the narrator, romances begin to move away from the typical medieval world. The heroes are thrown into a troubled life. They ask questions, doubt, dream, try to interpret the symbols, and they want to leave their solitude, but most of the time they move towards a tragic destiny or frustration. Old romances are usually classified into Castilian epic romances, tepa, Moorish border ballads, ballads of epic French themes, and romantic and lyrical ballads.