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

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Contents: Introduction
Scott: Scott's audiences, knowledge and inclinations
Scott and false intertexts
Scott's use of allusion to traditional song
Scott's Contemporaries: Galt and Hogg
Mitford
Scott's Legacy, and Three Muscular Christians: Mid-Nineteenth-century novelists
Borrow
Kingsley
Hughes
Gaskell
Dickens and Thackeray: Some new contexts
Dickens: a withdrawal from narrative commitment
Thackeray, popular song and gender politics
Jefferies
Hardy: Hardy's background and musical milieux
Church bands
Traditional dance and song
Conclusion
Appendices: The song sequence in Redgauntlet
Hardy's collection of 'Country Songs of 1820 Onwards'
Bibliography
Index.

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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.

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