A01=Una McIlvenna
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
Author_Una McIlvenna
automatic-update
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=AVGH
Category=AVLT
Category=DSBC
Category=DSBD
Category=HBJD
Category=HBLH
Category=HBTB
Category=JKVP
Category=NHD
Category=NHTB
COP=United States
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
eq_art-fashion-photography
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_music
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
Language_English
PA=Available
Price_€100 and above
PS=Active
softlaunch
Product details
- ISBN 9780197551851
- Weight: 866g
- Dimensions: 244 x 162mm
- Publication Date: 28 Sep 2022
- Publisher: Oxford University Press Inc
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
- Language: English
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
Across Europe, from the dawn of print until the early twentieth century, the news of crime and criminals' public executions was printed in song form on cheap broadsides and pamphlets to be sold in streets and marketplaces by ballad-singers. Singing the News of Death: Execution Ballads in Europe 1500-1900 looks at how and why song was employed across Europe for centuries as a vehicle for broadcasting news about crime and executions, exploring how this performative medium could frame and mediate the message of punishment and repentance. Examining ballads in English, French, Dutch, German, and Italian across four centuries, author Una McIlvenna offers the first multilingual and longue durée study of the complex and fascinating phenomenon of popular songs about brutal public death.
Ballads were frequently written in the first-person voice, and often purported to be the last words, confession or 'dying speech' of the condemned criminal, yet were ironically on sale the day of the execution itself. Musical notation was generally not required as ballads were set to well-known tunes. Execution ballads were therefore a medium accessible to all, regardless of literacy, social class, age, gender or location. A genre that retained extraordinary continuities in form and content across time, space, and language, the execution ballad grew in popularity in the nineteenth century, and only began to fade as executions themselves were removed from the public eye. With an accompanying database of recordings, Singing the News of Death brings these centuries-old songs of death back to life.
Una McIlvenna is Honorary Senior Lecturer at the Australian National University. A literary and cultural historian of early modern Europe, she is also the author of Scandal and Reputation at the Court of Catherine de Medici (2016). She has held positions at the Universities of Melbourne, Sydney, Kent and Queen Mary University of London.
