The Sound of Imminent Death
Execution Ballads in Early Modern and Nineteenth-Century Europe
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17561/blo.vextra6.8112Keywords:
Ballads, Ballads about the executed, Public execution, Contrafactum, Street singers, Shame, Truth and fictionAbstract
ince the dawn of the printing press, songs about especially newsworthy events were published. Ballads about criminals and their executions were one of the most popular subgenres. Their oral dissemination also made them an extraordinarily successful means of receiving news. Regardless of cultural level, social status, gender, or age, everyone could listen to and understand the content of a ballad about the executed. This study aims to explain not only the characteristic features of ballads about the executed but also a central aspect that may be difficult to grasp for most modern observers. This aspect is the fact that it was a common practice, from the 16th to the 19th centuries, for people to sing and listen to news of crimes and their often brutally violent punishments. This article examines ballads about the executed in English, French, German, Dutch, and Italian. It covers the period from the 16th to the 19th century, revealing the extraordinary uniformity of the genre in all languages and in all periods.
Downloads
References
BOTREL, Jean-François (1973) : “Les aveugles colporteurs d'imprimés en Espagne”, Mélanges de la Casa de Velázquez, 9, pp. 417-482. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3406/casa.1973.1082
BUJEAUD, Jérôme (1895): Chansons populaires des provinces de l'ouest, Poitou, Saintonge, Aunis et Angoumois, avec les airs originaux, Niort, Clouzot.
CARNELOS, Laura (2016): “Street Voices. The Role of Blind Performers in Early Modern Italy”, Italian Studies, 71/2, pp. 184-196. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/00751634.2016.1175716
DARNTON, Robert (2010): Poetry and the Police: Communication Networks in Eighteenth-Century Paris, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press.
DEGL’INNOCENTI, Lucca y ROSPOCHER, Massimo (eds.) (2019): “Special Issue Street Singers in Renaissance Europe”, Renaissance Studies 33/1. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/rest.12529
DOLAN, Frances E. (2010): “Tracking the Petty Traitor Across Genres”, en Ballads and Broadsides in Britain, 1500-1800, Patricia Fumerton and Anita Guerrini (eds.), Burlington, VT: Ashgate, pp. 149-171.
HAMMOND, Nicholas (2019): The Powers of Sound and Song in Early Modern Paris, University Park, Pennsylvania University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9780271085531
LUNDIN, Matthew (2012): Paper Memory: A Sixteenth-Century Townsman Writes His World, Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4159/harvard.9780674067653
MCILVENNA, Una (2016a): “When the News Was Sung: Ballads as News Media in Early Modern Europe”, Media History, “Special Issue: Managing the News in Early Modern Europe”, Helmer Helmers and Michiel van Groesen (eds.), pp. 1-17.
MCILVENNA, Una (2016b): “Ballads of Death and Disaster: The Role of Song in Early Modern News Transmission”, en Disaster, Death and the Emotions in the Shadow of the Apocalypse, Jennifer Spinks y Charles Zika (eds.), Londres, Palgrave, pp. 277-296. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-44271-0_13
MCILVENNA, Una (2022): Singing the News of Death: Execution Ballads in Europe 1500-1900, Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197551851.001.0001
MCILVENNA, Una, GØRIL BRANDTZAEG, Siv y GOMIS, Juan (2021): “Singing the News of Punishment: The Execution Ballad in Europe, 1550-1900”, Quaerendo 51 (1/2), pp. 123-159. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/15700690-12341485
MILLIOT, Vincent (1995): Les 'Cris de Paris', ou, Le peuple travesti: les représentations des petits métiers parisiens (XVIe-XVIIIe siècles), Paris, Publications de la Sorbonne. DOI : https://doi.org/10.3406/rhmc.1994.1702
PETTEGREE, Andrew (2014): The Invention of News: How the World Came to Know About Itself, London, Yale University Press.
ROBISHEAUX, Thomas (2014): “The German Witch Trials”, en The Oxford Handbook of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe and Colonial America, Brian P. Levack (ed.), Oxford, Oxford University Press, pp. 179-198.
SALMAN, Jeroen (2019): ‘Frail echoes of singing in the streets. Tracing ballad sellers and their reputation in the Low Countries’, Renaissance Studies 33/1, “Special Issue: Street Singers in Renaissance Europe”, pp. 199-135. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/rest.12531
SALZBERG, Rosa (2009): “The Lyre, the Pen and the Press: Performers and Cheap Print in Cinquecento Venice”, en The Books of Venice: Miscellanea Marciana, Lisa Pons and Craig Kallendorf (eds.), Venice, La Musa Talia, pp. 251-276.
SALZBERG, Rosa (2016): “`Poverty Makes Me Invisible`: Street Singers and Hard Times in Italian Renaissance Cities”, Italian Studies, 71/2, pp. 212-224. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/00751634.2016.1175719
VAN DÜLMEN, Richard (1990): Theatre of Horror: Crime and Punishment in Early Modern Germany, Cambridge, Polity.
WILLIAMS, Sarah F. (2015): Damnable Practises: Witches, Dangerous Women, and Music in Seventeenth-Century English Broadside Ballads, London, Routledge. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315575810
WILTENBURG, Joy (2004): “True Crime: The Origins of Modern Sensationalism”, The American Historical Review, 109/5, pp. 1377-1404. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1086/530930
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2023 McIlvenna Una
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).
