Provençal in origin (ballada, from ballar, to dance), the ballade assumed its classical fixity of form with its move northwards, and found a generic niche between the stately solemnity of the chant royal and the engaging directness of the rondeau. The commonest form of ballade is composed of three eight-line stanzas rhyming ababbcbC and a four-line envoi rhyming bcbC; as the capital letter indicates, the last line of the first stanza serves as a refrain, repeated at the last line of each stanza and of the envoi (which is the equivalent of the last half of one of the main stanzas). But there are several variations in length of stanza (particularly 10 or 12 lines) and thus of envoi, and the envoi may be variously addressed to the ‘Prince’ (a nobleman, and particularly the presiding judge at a medieval literary tournament), or to some other noble or lady (‘Sire’, ‘Reine’, ‘Dame’) as homage or formula of leave-taking. The lines are usually octosyllabic or decasyllabic, depending on the stanza length (eight lines or ten); the so-called ‘strophe carrée’ was proposed as a principle by Jean Molinet, who was also responsible for regularizing the envoi.
The ballade was standardized in the 14th c. by Machaut, Froissart, and Deschamps, whose Art de dictier et fere ballades et chants royaux (1392) laid down the rules of the form exemplified in his own thousand-odd ballades. In the following century it was further developed by Chartier, Charles d'Orléans, Christine de Pizan, and Villon, who, perhaps best of all, exploited the two rhymes for their haunted melancholy or ironic insistence, and the refrain for its mixture of regret and worldly cynicism. The ballade continued to be practised up to the time of Marot in the early 16th c., but was condemned by the Pléiade, along with other medieval fixed forms, as one of the ‘épiceries qui corrompent notre langue’ ( Défense et illustration), as well as by classical successors in the 17th c. (with the exception of La Fontaine), who regarded it as a barbaric survival; both Molière and Boileau make contemptuous allusions to it. Only with the Parnassians, and particularly with Banville's Trente-six ballades joyeuses à la manière de Villon, was the ballade revived and put into service by Coppée, Verlaine, Richepin, and Maurice Rollinat (1846-1903). From 1896, Paul Fort published innumerable ‘ballades’ in prose. The Romantic ‘ballad’ of Hugo's Odes et ballades falls into the Anglo-Germanic tradition of the popular narrative ballad, as does Musset's sly, parodic ‘Ballade à la lune’. [See Versification.]
[Clive Scott]
