Ballads, Songs and Snatches: The Appropriation of Folk Song and Popular Culture in British 19th-Century Realist Prose

by Jackson-Houlston,C.M.

• ISBN13: 9781840142969
• ISBN10: 1840142960
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1999-08-28
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

As a book on allusion, this has interest for both the traditional literary or cultural historian and for the modern student of textuality and readership positions. It focuses on allusion to folksong, and, more tangentially, to popular culture, areas which have so far been slighted by literary critics.In the nineteenth century many authors attempted to mediate the culture(s) of the working classes for the enjoyment of their predominantly middle-class audiences. In so doing they took songs out of their original social and musical contexts and employed a variety of strategies which - consciously or unconsciously - romanticised, falsified or denigrated what the novels or stories claimed to represent. In addition, some writers who were well-informed about the cultures they described used allusion to song as a covert system of reference to topics such as sexuality and the criticism of class and gender relations which it was difficult to discuss directly.

Author Biography

C.M. Jackson-Houlston is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Humanities at Oxford Brookes University.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	p. ix
Introduction	p. 1
Scott	p. 13
Scott's audiences, knowledge and inclinations	p. 14
Scott and false intertexts	p. 23
Scott's use of allusion to traditional song	p. 32
Scott's Contemporaries	p. 51
Galt and Hogg	p. 51
Mitford	p. 56
Scott's Legacy, and Three Muscular Christians	p. 62
Mid Nineteenth-century Novelists	p. 62
Borrow	p. 68
Kingsley	p. 74
Hughes	p. 81
Gaskell	p. 91
Dickens and Thackeray	p. 111
Some new contexts	p. 111
Dickens: a withdrawal from narrative commitment	p. 112
Thackeray, popular song and gender politics	p. 117
Jefferies	p. 126
Hardy	p. 140
Hardy's background and musical milieux	p. 140
Church bands	p. 147
Traditional dance and song	p. 150
Conclusion	p. 173
Appendices
The song sequence in Redgauntlet	p. 179
Hardy's collection of 'Country Songs of 1820 Onwards'	p. 182
Bibliography	p. 194
Index	p. 209
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