6/10/08

So I know a little more about ballads and their economics now, after my research yesterday. A ballad would cost 1/2 d. I'm pretty sure that's half a penny--I need to work through British currency, if only to make sure that all those things I think I know actually are right. I'm beginning to wonder whether the ancient Brits had eight fingers on each hand, given the number of base 16 systems we've inherited. Well, given ounces.

Anyway, ballad-sellers--basically, just vagrants--would be given a dozen groats worth of ballads and would wander (or take determined routes? I wonder) through the countryside. By 1624 or so, a dedicated cartel in London governed the production, warehousing, and distribution networks. I'm more interested in before that time, but I suspect there's not all that much extant. We have about 100-200 ballads from that period and suspect there were perhaps 1000 going around. People would paste ballads up on their walls, as a sort of wallpaper/poster, particularly in taverns.

The fact that our first extant edition of Jack of Newburry happens after 1620 is then quite significant--the chapbook was created largely by our cartel, in order to capitalize on the distribution network and sell cheap books along these distribution networks. (Peddlers were "chap men".)

Ah! I stopped writing to look at my sentences. That defeats the purpose of free writing, which is to open the channel between thoughts and words, not to look at things. I look at things all the time.

Especially this Harry Berger Milton essay. I simply can not make myself either believe him or care about what it is that he thinks he's got to say. He's reading Milton in the sort of overingenious way that I'm willing to accept for Spenser, but here it drives me nuts. He'll talk about flaws in God's view of humanity--I just don't buy that Milton intentionally represented his God as a flawed character that develops. But then Berger knows the poem better than I do. (A lot.) But surely that option is off the table!

I guess reading the damn essay while drinking or falling asleep doesn't help, either. But Rosalie Colie sounds delightful, even while I am falling asleep. It's making ever more clear that that's the kind of book that I'd love to write (and won't be able to)--the small, eloquent, influential book.

I need to pay attention to English sentences to see how frequently Time-Manner-Place holds.

Okay, that's done. It doesn't.

I'm enjoying my slow read through Juvenal--he's punchy, but I feel like I'm doing something I should have done years ago. Because I am, largely. But there must be some other reason.

So, knowing what I now know about ballads, does it help me approach Donnelly/Elderton/Parker any better? One fun question: "what was Jack of Newberry before it was a chapbook?"