Books by "David J. Sharp"
4 books found
The Folk Handbook
by John Morrish, Rikky Rooksby, Mark Brend, Nigel Williamson, David Atkinson
2007 · Backbeat Books
(Book). by David Atkinson, Vic Gammon, Rikky Rooksby, Mark Brend, John Morrish, Martin Carthy, and Nigel Williamson. Words & melodies for 80+ traditional songs, plus detailed explorations of their history & meaning and their value to writers & performers. With audio tracks of 20 songs recorded in the field.
In the American imagination, the word Appalachia designates more than a geographical region. It evokes fiddle tunes, patchwork quilts, split-rail fences, and all the other artifacts that decorate a cherished romantic region of the American mind. Da
Ballads are a fascinating subject of study not least because of their endless variety. It is quite remarkable that ballads taken down or recorded from singers separated by centuries in time and by hundreds of kilometres in distance, should be both different and yet recognizably the same. In The English Traditional Ballad, David Atkinson examines the ways in which the body of ballads known in England make reference both to ballads from elsewhere and to other English folk songs. The book outlines current theoretical directions in ballad scholarship: structuralism, traditional referentiality, genre and context, print and oral transmission, and the theory of tradition and revival. These are combined to offer readers a method of approaching the central issue in ballad studies - the creation of meaning(s) out of ballad texts. Atkinson focuses on some of the most interesting problems in ballad studies: the 'wit-combat' in versions of The Unquiet Grave; variable perspectives in comic ballads about marriage; incest as a ballad theme; problems of feminine motivation in ballads like The Outlandish Knight and The Broomfield Hill; murder ballads and murder in other instances of early popular literature. Through discussion of these issues and themes in ballad texts, the book outlines a way of tracing tradition(s) in English balladry, while recognizing that ballad tradition is far from being simply chronological and linear.