Ballades & Rhymes from Ballades in Blue China and Rhymes a la Mode

Lang, Andrew, 1844-1912Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.1

Word count: 131K words
Chapters: 14

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Ballades & Rhymes from Ballades in Blue China and Rhymes a la Mode by Andrew LangAuthor: Lang, Andrew, 1844-1912,Language: English, Class: PR: Language and Literatures: English literature, Release Date: Mar 1, 2002

Editor's review

This poetry collection by Andrew Lang gathers ballades from Ballades in Blue China and shorter poems from Rhymes a la Mode, showing the Victorian man of letters' delight in verbal play and lyrical experiment through archaic forms. Lang's ballades are attentive to refrain and rhythm, carrying echoes of medieval and French narrative poetry, yet stuffed with exotic images such as blue china and chinoiserie, so reading them offers both a retro rhythmic feel and a light intellectual joke. For Chinese readers, their value lies more in understanding how nineteenth-century English poetry played with fixed forms, and in Lang's dual relish as folklorist and poet. The book is short, suitable as practice material for English verse meter and for picking a few poems to read aloud in leisure, feeling the musicality of rhyme and repetition. Note that allusions and period vocabulary are plentiful, and an edition without notes will pose some obstacles.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers interested in Victorian English poetry and the ballade form
Learners who want short poems to practice reading aloud and feel meter
Readers who like light, playful verse rather than heavy lyric poetry

Not a good fit for

Beginners expecting a Chinese translation or detailed notes
Readers who prefer modern free verse and strong emotional expression

Reading tips

Start by reading the ballades aloud, noting refrains and the rhyme changes at each stanza's close.
Mark allusions or archaic words as you go, then look them up together after finishing the poem.
Read only three to five poems at a time to keep the rhythm fresh and avoid reading it all at once.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

Is this book in Chinese or English?

This is the original English e-book released by Project Gutenberg, with English text and no Chinese translation; reading it requires some ability to read English poetry.

Can I understand the ballades without notes?

The narrative thread of a ballade is usually clear, but allusions, place names, and period vocabulary may get in the way. Use an online dictionary and encyclopedia as you read, focus on rhythm and refrain structure, and do not insist on understanding every word.

Is it suitable for learning English meter?

It works as supplementary material. The ballades' refrains and regular rhymes make it easy to feel English stress rhythm, but the poems contain many archaic words and proper names, so it is best used alongside a meter textbook with notes.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Lang, Andrew, 1844-1912 Author

Andrew Lang (1844–1912) was a British writer, poet and folklorist best known for compiling collections of fairy tales and myths. The library holds 77 of his works, including The Blue Fairy Book, The Red Fairy Book, The Yellow Fairy Book, The Violet Fairy Book and The Brown Fairy Book, as well as Tales of Troy and Greece and The Homeric Hymns. He gathered, edited and retold folk tales from Europe and around the world, naming the volumes by colour; his clear, fluent prose served both children and folklore scholarship. These collections preserved a wealth of oral material and shaped the modern English-speaking world's image of fairy tales, leaving a lasting influence on fairy-tale publishing and comparative story research. Public information on his life is limited, so this note focuses on his editorial and literary contributions.