Ballade

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]

Ballade, term used in German literature since the time of the Sturm und Drang for narrative poems in stanzas, especially those with a dramatic climax. Bishop Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (1765) was a major influence on the growth of the modern German ballad. Many older examples of ballad poetry are to be found among the folk-songs of the later Middle Ages and the 16th c., and these are nowadays designated ‘Volksballaden’. The cult of the ballad in the 18th c. owed much to Herder's enthusiasm for the collection of folk-songs. Notable early modern ballads are ‘Lenore’ by G. A. Bürger and Goethe's ‘Erlkönig’ and ‘Der König in Thule’. The ballad was cultivated in a more intellectual and conscious fashion by Goethe and Schiller, particularly in their so-called Balladenjahr 1797. The Romantic movement (see Romantik) revived the ballad as an aspect of the folk-song. Older examples were popularized by Des Knaben Wunderhorn and new ones written by Chamisso, Brentano, Eichendorff, and Uhland, among others. Many poets of the 19th c. wrote ballads and, among many that are mediocre, those of Th. Fontane stand out. The principal 20th-c. writer of ballads is Börries von Münchhausen. The word has occasionally been used as a title, as in ‘Ballade des äußeren Lebens’ by H. von Hofmannsthal. Ballad-type poems of a more satirical and even scurrilous type have also been cultivated in this century, e.g. by B. Brecht and by cabaret performers such as F. Wedekind. It has become increasingly ideological in orientation since the 1960s.