“Old England of thy sins in time repent […]”: Religious lexis and discourse in 17th century Broadside Ballads

Elisabetta Cecconi

doi:10.13125/rhesis/5507

Elisabetta Cecconi

DOI: https://doi.org/10.13125/rhesis/5507

Keywords: 17th century, religious broadside ballads, discourse construction, intertextuality, audience

Abstract

This paper draws on the Bodleian Allegro Catalogue to examine a group of 17th religious broadside ballads. In particular I show that the Protestant broadside is a stylistically hybrid text where features of traditional ballads merge with 1) lexico-syntactic loans from the Holy Scriptures and 2) properties of religious prose style (i.e. interest in content, discourse cohesion, intrusive author). In the first part of my study I outline the specificity of the godly broadside as distinct from popular ballads. In the second part I focus on three apocalyptic broadsides and I analyse them in terms of discourse construction, collocation and prosodic features. Similarities in text organization highlight the use of formulaic patterns which reflect the Puritan stance in relation to the themes of repentance, God's Judgement and divine retribution. Borrowings from the language of the Prophetic Books, on the other hand, document the importance ascribed to intertextuality as a means of 1) enhancing the value of the ballad-content and 2) satisfying people's preference for themes they were already familiar with from their knowledge of the Bible or from their attendance of religious services. This latter aspect testifies to the major role played by the audience in the construction/representation of religious discourse.

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