In a message dated Mon, 15 May 2000 3:07:35 PM Eastern Daylight Time, Doug Henwood
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
<< Charles Brown wrote:
>Even if the olden days were not the good olden days, this literature
>may reflect the enormous pain suffered by the English peasants who
>were brutalized in the primitive accumulation.
I don't think peasants made a large contribution to canonical English
poetry, except as exotic subjects for middle- and upper-class poets.
Doug
* * *
And this from a former lit grad student! I think they need less Theory and more
literature in those classes. My old Oxford Anthology of English poetry has not
insubstantial chunks of material that we would call folk poetry, medieval and
Renaissance, not all of it is court song, and much that is is obviously taken over
from popular song. There is a huge collection ballads--I think the Child ballads is
many volumes. Ewam McColl and Peggy Seeger had a lot records singing them and Scots
ballads as well. Burns, also, collected a lot of Scots folk song that he wrote down as
poetry, ang was not the only one. Jean Redpath has at least seven discs of this
material, almost all of it transcriptions. Please, Doug! Less Butler and more Burns.
--ks
>>
