6/1/2023 0 Comments Dives and lazarus![]() I have analyzed this cardinal text as my primary document due to the nature of the work in which it is collected and Child’s elucidation of his method in finding the folk song lyrics. Francis James Child’s preeminent catalogue of Anglican folk-songs English and Scottish Popular Ballads. The folk ballad of “the Ryche man and poor Lazarus” was first granted licensing rights to a John Wallye and Mistress Toye in 1557 in a transcript from the Register of the Company of Stationers of London as chronicled in Dr. That component will likely dominate their expression and aesthetic creation in such a subtle manner that they may perhaps be totally precluded from noticing the moments in which their “objective” folk-ballad reveals as much about the artist and their social pressures as it does about the original “objective” version’s intent. ![]() In choosing the topic for the folk-ballad, the artist has either consciously or subconsciously been spurned on to creation by some aspect of the topic’s content whether they are aware of what that aspect is or not. Firstly, the artist, even if they consider their countenance of the tale to be the most objective narrative possible, have already committed an act that expresses their inherent subjectivity. ![]() Gowler among others, find this conclusion inaccurate. Yet I, in the company of more contemporary scholars such as Dr. 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 communal pressures of the culture on the 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 the most salient in their nomenclature-whether the song is framed as a subjective “regurgitation” of an experience and the mental state which it catalyzed in the subject or conversely the so-called “objective” delineation of a tale often found in the works of antiquarian bards and medieval minstrels. Since the folk-song should be an honest reflection of a certain community’s stance espoused at the time of the work’s creation, one should be most apt to understand the nuance of the folk ballad “Dives and Lazarus” in the context of the 16 th century Worcestershire setting in which it was created.īefore analyzing the specific ballad itself, a certain familiarity with the paradigms of folk music should better inform conclusions about its claims. As such one may perhaps contend that folk-songs based on the parable of Christ that modify the narrative components do so for the sake of a moral attunement relative to the “modifier’s” social environment that they might either reinforce certain thematic elements of the original Biblical parable itself or suggest a new object of moral focus catalyzed by the latter social milieu in which reiteration was produced. Therefore, one might contend that every prophetic folk-balladeer par excellence like Christ himself tells stories that do not merely reveal narrative content for the sake of the story itself rather these troubadours often relay the normative moral tenets of their time, people, and locale. With this is mind, we can perhaps note the inherent similarities present in the medium of folk music and the portions of the New Testament containing Jesus’s parables inasmuch both a folk song and a parable are both succinct and didactic elucidations of certain societal value systems. 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 artistic creation warrants an analytical “reception history” more so than the traditional folk-song or ballad as scholar Cecil J. The Genealogical Account of the Folk-Ballad “Dives and Lazarus”
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