The Ballad Revival in Romantic-era Britain, Germany and Scandinavia

Explores the Romantic-era ballad revival in Britain, Germany and Scandinavia as a transnational phenomenon

• Offers original insights into the impact of the Northern European ballad revival on romantic aesthetics and the rise of literary history
• Maps border-crossing ballad-influences on romantic poetry and prose fiction
• Introduces cultural and literary texts that have never been translated into English and offers new intertextual readings of canonical works by Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, and Scott
• Contributes new perspectives on the interrelationship between British, German, and Scandinavian romanticism

Engaging with research fields including studies of cultural transfer, reception, transtextuality and adaptation, Lis Møller charts the circulation of ideas and texts – popular ballads and literary works inspired by popular balladry – between three languages: English, German and Danish. By tracing such exchanges, she challenges the idea that the Romantic-era ballad revival represented an inward turn towards the roots of one’s national culture. As an alternative to the national approach, Møller proposes to view the ballad revival as a search for Northern European cultural entanglements. This book therefore contributes to the new trend in Romantic studies, which, moving beyond the mono-national approach, focuses on European Romanticism and explores the interaction of individual Romanticisms across national borders.