Analysis of the ballad: “The Three Ravens”

Just considering the title the intelligent reader expects the main character of the ballad to be the three ravens, while is curious to find out if the ballad would be a realistic or fantastic one.

This short narrative poem respects the general features of the middle ages’ ballads:

The ballad “the three ravens” is a tragic love story, indeed the true main characters of the story aren’t the three ravens but two lovers, the dead knight and the fallow Doe, whose love was interrupted by the death in war of the knight. Besides the present ballad consists of only narration and there aren’t dialogues.

Therefore the intelligent reader can suppose the fallow Doe is a metaphor, that stays probably for the true love of the knight, a recurring character of the ballads.

Going on reading the poem the intelligent reader can notice there’s the use of a very simple and popular language and a very simple syntax, indeed ballads were part of the popular culture and they were composed by the folk and addressed to common people, mainly unlitterate.

Later on the intelligent reader might notice the present poem hasn’t an essential feature of the middle ages’ ballads, the repetitions and the refrains, important characteristic of these short narrative poems, that were ended out orally, that makes the poem easier to memorize. Therefore, all the stanzas of the poem go on with the narration and there aren’t any pauses.

Finally, the ballad is characterized by a general lack of details and information: there’s an abrupt beginning, indeed the reader is brought in medias res by the narrator, with a lending role of the three ravens, that seem firstly the main characters and instead secondly disappears, and ending, indeed the narration is interrupted without a real conclusion. Furthermore, also the characters are only sketched, they aren’t introduced and they don’t have a physical and psychological characterisation, but they are only appointed.