Ballad

The ballad is a short lyric-epic work with a tense, dramatic plot of fantastic, historical, or heroic content, in which the narrative outline is combined with emotional agitation and often a tragic resolution. The genre descends from the folk ballad-song; the literary ballad was established by the Romantics, who valued in it mysteriousness, a connection with folklore, and the otherworldly. Classic examples are Goethe's Erlkönig (The Erl-King) and the ballads of Friedrich Schiller and Adam Mickiewicz. In Ukrainian literature the Romantic ballad was inaugurated by Petro Hulak-Artemovsky (Tvardovsky, The Fisherman); unsurpassed romantic ballads were created by Taras Shevchenko (The Bewitched Woman, The Poplar, The Lily, The Drowned Maiden), drawing on folk demonology and motifs of a maiden's transformation into a plant.