![]() The folk ballad “Dives and Lazarus” begins in medias res with little introduction or character development of the eponymous characters “Dives” or “Lazarus” on the part of third person omniscient narrator prior to the event being described within the confines of the song itself. Somewhat Objective Description of the Ballad? (sans analysis) Francis James Child of Harvard University, determined that the ballad, “unlike other songs, does not purport to give utterance to the mood or feeling of the singer … merely tells what happened and what people said…if it were possible to conceive of a tale telling itself, without the instrumentality of a conscious speaker, the ballad would be such a tale” (Child, xi). The preeminent 19 th century scholar of the English and Scottish folk ballad tradition, Dr. Most historians argue that the demarcation lying in the artistic perspective of either the subjective folk song or objective folk ballad is such a critical factor in determining the appropriate method in which one analyzes the work because the latter presupposes the individual auteur’s relative autonomy in the creation of the work whereas the former’s creation presupposes the subtle manipulation of the community as an artistic agent (Sharp 109-110). ![]() Sharp contends that folk-music bifurcates into two general domains the folk “song” and the folk ballad, of which a given work of folk-music is organized primarily in accordance with one specific quality that folk-music scholars find most salient-whether the song is framed as a subjective expression of the experience of Nietzsche’s Dionysian artist or rather the objective delineation of a tale befitting most antiquarian bards or medieval minstrels. Hence, the folk-song based on a parable is a society’s response to the ecclesiastic call of the original iteration of the parable in the Bible. ![]() Purportedly, the folk-song should be an honest reflection of the majoritarian stance that a given society espouses at the given time of the work’s creation therefore, the manipulation of the parable’s minutiae in the ecclesiastic text or tradition insofar that there is significant inclusion or exclusion of certain thematic elements would suggest the society’s disposition towards the themes or moral claims included within the original Biblical literature. However, since folk-music is specifically not the product of a fickle artist’s choice of artistic topic and rather is an explicated lesson originating in communal values, the reappearance of the parable would seem to suggest that the chronologically subsequent society needed to be either reminded of the moral themes of Christ’s parable or perhaps needed to amend the morals as they appeared in the anterior Biblical source-material. Considering the nexus in which the two mediums attempt to teach through the employ of narrative, it appears that any folk-song that is ultimately a transfigured parable of Christ would be created to reinforce a certain thematic element of the original parable itself contextualized in the new social milieu and historical environment which the subsequent iteration is crafted. With this is mind, we can perhaps note the inherent similitude in the respective medium of folk music when contrasted with Jesus’s parables in the New Testament both a folk song and a parable are relatively succinct and didactic manifestations of a value systems-the latter religious and the former societal-and one could contend that every folk-balladeer par excellence is able to briefly mimic Christ as the sonorous prophet who transcends their art-form and simultaneously becoming the moralistic raconteur. Sharp notes, “ art music is the work of the individual…Folk music, on the other hand, is the product of a race, and reflects feelings and tastes that are communal rather than personal it is always in solution its creation is never completed” (Sharp, 19-20). Perhaps no objet d’art warrants an analytical “reception history” more so than the traditional folk-song or ballad as scholar Cecil J. ![]() Tentative Title: Introduction to the Genealogical Account of the Folk-Ballad “Dives and Lazarus”
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |