Alonzo the Brave: a Gothic literary ballad

Abstract

A ballad is a genre that covers a wide variety of verse, but the word originally signified a 'dance song'. Many ballads eloquent of love, youth and the springtide were sung by villagers at their feasting times to a rhythmic measure or 'ballad metre' (i.e. four-line stanzas). They are then of ancient origins, and many have traced their medieval origins in folklore traditions, although others place them much nearer to our times. (Grigson 1975). I am concerned here, however, with a kind of ballad, the literary ballad, written in imitation of the old ones, which had their heyday in the Romantic era. More specifically, I shall focus on a Gothic ballad, Alonzo the Brave, of 1795, written by M. Gregory Lewis, who contrived a fictional Spanish story, found by the heroine of his famous novel, The Monk, in an old Spanish book of ballads.