The feminine corpus in F. J. Child's collection of the English and Scottish popular ballads

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dc.contributor.advisorChance, Janeen_US
dc.creatorLutz, Gretchen Kayen_US
dc.date.accessioned2009-06-04T06:29:10Zen_US
dc.date.available2009-06-04T06:29:10Zen_US
dc.date.issued1998en_US
dc.description.abstractThe ballads examined here are from F. J. Child's The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, the authoritative collection of ballads. Though definitions of the ballad vary, most agree that the ballad is an orally transmitted folksong that tells a story. The Child ballad collection has stood a solitary monument from its publication (1882-1894). In it Child brought together from manuscripts and printed sources all of the extant English and Scottish ballads that he regarded as authentic. Though Child's work itself was groundbreaking, exploring territory marginal to the sort of academic study making up his official duties as professor of English at Harvard, his collection soon became canonical, subjected to critical study as a sub-genre. Perhaps because Child himself died before he could write his essay on what the ballads were and what they meant, since Child's death, much of the critical work has been an attempt to fill in what was left undone by Child, that is, defining the ballad and analyzing the criteria by which Child made his choices. In more recent times, critical studies of Child's works have applied psychoanalytic and feminist critiques to selected ballads. Yet, no previous work has examined the relationship of Child himself to his collection. This work sets out to view the Child collection in terms of literary critical theory, showing that Child's collecting is an act of Lacanian paternity whereby the collector, attracted especially by the bodies of the female characters, is moved to bring all the ballads under his dominion yet is subverted in his desire for dominion as female characters present themselves in terms of "bodytalk." Chapter one shows Child's collecting as Lacanian paternity. Chapter two focuses on the presentation of women's bodies in the ballads, The final chapter shows that the women characters in selected ballads speak according to what critic Jane Burns terms "bodytalk."en_US
dc.format.extent159 p.en_US
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdfen_US
dc.identifier.callnoTHESIS ENGL. 1998 LUTZen_US
dc.identifier.citationLutz, Gretchen Kay. "The feminine corpus in F. J. Child's collection of the English and Scottish popular ballads." (1998) Diss., Rice University. <a href="https://hdl.handle.net/1911/19283">https://hdl.handle.net/1911/19283</a>.en_US
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/1911/19283en_US
dc.language.isoengen_US
dc.rightsCopyright is held by the author, unless otherwise indicated. Permission to reuse, publish, or reproduce the work beyond the bounds of fair use or other exemptions to copyright law must be obtained from the copyright holder.en_US
dc.subjectFolkloreen_US
dc.subjectMusicen_US
dc.subjectEnglish literatureen_US
dc.titleThe feminine corpus in F. J. Child's collection of the English and Scottish popular balladsen_US
dc.typeThesisen_US
dc.type.materialTexten_US
thesis.degree.departmentEnglishen_US
thesis.degree.disciplineHumanitiesen_US
thesis.degree.grantorRice Universityen_US
thesis.degree.levelDoctoralen_US
thesis.degree.nameDoctor of Philosophyen_US
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