Singing the News: Ballads in Mid-Tudor England

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List of Tables
List of Figures
Abbreviations
Acknowledgements
Editorial Note
A Note on Musical Analysis
Chapter 1 Introduction - now lesten a whyle & let hus singe
Chapter 2 'Lend listning eares a while to me' - the production and consumption of sixteenth-century ballads
Chapter 3 'I praye thee mynstrell make no stoppe' - the music of the mid-Tudor ballads
Chapter 4 'Sung to filthy tunes' - the meaning of music
Chapter 5 'Ye never herd so many newes' - the social circulation of information in ballads
Chapter 6 'Of popyshnes and heresye' - political ballads and the fall of Thomas Cromwell
Chapter 7 'Lyege lady and queene' - discourses of obedience in the reign of Mary I
Chapter 8 'Some good man, for the commons speake' - scribal collections and social criticism
Conclusion 'one hundred of ballits'
Bibliography

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Singing the News is the first study to concentrate on sixteenth-century ballads, when there was no regular and reliable alternative means of finding out news and information. It is a highly readable and accessible account of the important role played by ballads in spreading news during a period when discussing politics was treason. The study provides a new analytical framework for understanding the ways in which balladeers spread their messages to the masses. Jenni Hyde focusses on the melody as much as the words, showing how music helped to shape the understanding of texts. Music provided an emotive soundtrack to words which helped to shape sixteenth-century understandings of gendered monarchy, heresy and the social cohesion of the commonwealth. By combining the study of ballads in manuscript and print with sources such as letters and state records, the study shows that when their topics edged too close to sedition, balladeers were more than capable of using sophisticated methods to disguise their true meaning in order to safeguard themselves and their audience, and above all to ensure that their news hit home.

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