Late Victorian Ballad Translation

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Literary analysis / Research / Writing

My PhD research focused on a traditionally British verse form, the ballad. In the last decade of the nineteenth century, at a time of a rampant uptake in colonialism--and, this being a generation after Darwin's Origin, at a time when there was no pretense of missionary zeal to justify colonial violence--the traditionally British verse form of the ballad was increasingly peopled with non-British cultures, voices, stories, and words.

My interest was in the representation of cognitive dissonance. How could a people who knew they were doing incredible harm to other people still believe themselves to be good, to be at the top of a hierarchy of civilization?

Ultimately, I couldn't answer this question; my ballads were more muddy than such a black-and-white question implies. Rather, my research roamed through balladic representations of indigenous Tahitians and Marquesans, Mohawk and Wendat people, Zulus, Hindus, Danes, Icelanders, and Scots and English people.

Although I no longer pursue an institutionally-backed research agenda, I still publish in Victorian literary journals--most recently with Victorian Poetry, for which I edited the Winter 2016 Special Issue on Ballads.

The publications that I developed out of my PhD dissertation research are:

2016 Introduction, Special Issue on Ballads, Victorian Poetry. Vol. 54, Iss. 4. pp. 411-420.
2014 “Ballad Haunting: Stevenson’s ‘The Song of Rahéro’.” Journal of Stevenson Studies.
Vol. 11, pp. 45-70.
2013 “Lang’s ‘Literary Plagiarism’: Reification, Immaterial Things, and the Literary Market.” Romanticism and Victorianism on the Net (RaVoN). Vol. 64.
2012 “‘The Walter Scott of Tahiti’: Robert Louis Stevenson’s Ballad Translation.” Literature Compass. Vol 9, Iss. 7, pp. 489-501.
2009 “Vile Bodies as Old Comedy.” Evelyn Waugh Newsletter and Studies. Vol. 39, Iss. 3.

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