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Gender Representations in “The Ballad of Tam Lin”

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Gender Representations in “The Ballad of Tam Lin” International Journal of Culture and History, Vol. 3, No. 3, September 2017 Gender Representations in “The Ballad of Tam Lin” Evgeniia Ermakova and Sabina Likhareva etc. It is due to being rooted in the national mentality that Abstract—The present paper addresses a highly relevant gender representations are so fixed in the cultural memory of issue of gender representation in literature that generates much the nation. academic interest as well as practical implications. The material for analysis is the text of the medieval ballad “Tam Lin” as published in the “Child Ballads”. Investigation methodology includes semantic, linguocultural, sociocultural and literary II. MATERIAL AND METHODOLOGY analysis. The findings have been categorized to show how a man As well as myths and fairy-tales, ballads, in spite of and a woman are perceived and portrayed in the English belonging to a plot-driven genre, represent complex culture. The paper would be of interest for scholars and multilevel structure full of implicit cultural senses. The practitioners dealing with gender issues, English and culture studies. material of the present study is comprised by text version A (Robert Burns’ version) of “The Ballad of Tam Lin”, taken Index Terms—Culture, gender, representation, semantics. from “The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, 1882-1898” edited by F. J. Child, otherwise known as “Child Ballads” [4], although the first mention of the plot dates back to as early as I. INTRODUCTION 1549. It can be addressed as a monument of both English and Ballads are poetical narratives frequently having medieval Scottish culture; while the setting, characters and main plot legendary background and performed to music. They have motif belong to the Scottish Borders folklore, the theme and their origins in folk oral tradition and tend to change little mode of conflict resolution are more specific to the English from generation to generation [1]. Being transmitters and culture. The storyline is as follows: Tam is a prisoner of the reflectors of naïve mythological picture of the world, they are fairies abducted from the world of mortal men and devoid of a manifestation of the traditional values of a society. In the soul; he asks Janet, an earthly woman, to help him turn into a context of gender representations in a particular national man again by catching him and holding him tightly despite all culture, ballads acquire great significance because they his transformations to dangerous and frightening beasts. She mirror the primordial view of traditional gender relationships. does it out of great love and so saves him and his eternal soul The present research is a sociolinguistic and linguocultural from the demonic realm of elves. analysis of the text of “Tam Lin”, the Scottish-English ballad, As with many other ballads, “Tam Lin’s” plot is not just to examine how gender representations specific for the physical but metaphysical or providential, suggesting English language/culture are manifested in it. It is expected different lines of interpretation due to the presence of mystic, that the paper would help in a better understanding of the magical and fantastic senses and cultural symbols. For the roots of traditional gender representations still affecting the purpose of this study, it would be more appropriate not to contemporary vision of gender. concentrate on such aspects of “Tam Lin’s” world as The recent anthropocentric turn in humanities has placed pagan-Christian or Scottish-English dichotomies, but look in man in the center of numerous interdisciplinary studies which more detail at the conflict as two genders’ interaction and at take different aspects of human nature as a starting point for the means of representing gender in the text. various cultural and language observations. Crossroads in The main analytical tool was complex linguistic, social and literature and culture provide vast opportunities to shed a new cultural analysis of the ballad; the combination of approaches light on cultural specificity of the national representations of proved to be necessary because the text elements verbalizing human nature [2]. The analysis of gender issues on the basis gender features tend to belong to different semiotic systems: of the English fictional texts has also established itself as an first, there are language units (phonetic, lexical, important part of English classroom in EFL practice [3]. The morphological, and syntactical), stylistic means (metaphors, study of gender representations in such folk poetical genre as epithets, etc.), cultural symbols (colors, plants, animals), ballads contributes to embracing specificity of gender roles in concepts of culture (fairy world, enchantment and the English culture. Gender images have shaped under the disenchantment) and literary devices, such as metamorphosis. influence of national and cultural semantics of the language; In the context of the ballad all of these are close-knit and i.e. they are ethnically specific and culturally marked. In tightly interwoven generating various religious, moral, other words, they are closely linked to such components of sociocultural and mythical components of gender identities. the national lifestyle as history, religion, social structure, It should be noted that gender identities of the main geographical position, folklore, outlook, art, everyday life, characters, Tam and Janet, and their interaction, can be studied from five closely connected yet slightly different Manuscript received May 12, 2017; revised August 1, 2017. perspectives: E. V. Ermakova, S. Likhareva are with Department of Linguodidactics, Perm State National Research University, Perm, 614990 Russian Federation Disenchantment as the plot-moving device to cross (e-mail: [email protected], [email protected]). borders between the real and fairy worlds; doi: 10.18178/ijch.2017.3.3.098 186 International Journal of Culture and History, Vol. 3, No. 3, September 2017 Personal development of an individual, or manliness sky and earth, the 24 elders in Revelation, or Mary, the evolution; Mother of God (The crown of the Virgin with 24 florets). Gender power relations; “A rose but only twae” – in many cultures the number Male and female initiation rites; brings bad luck; in Christianity, however, it comes to Evolution of the spiritual and religious components of symbolize the unity of man and woman, or the union between identity. Christ and the church. “Ay, at the end o’ seven years” – the number has immense importance in Christian tradition, as it is tied directly to III. ELVISH WORLD AND GENDER SEMANTICS God’s creation of all things. At the same time, for Tam who The first perspective, or plot line, focuses on the bonds of belongs to the elves it can mean suffer and redemption. the unreal supernatural world with the men’s world by way of Apart from numeric symbols, in the text of the ballad there showing how the main characters enter the fairy world and are lexical units representing religious semantics: how later they remove its spell. As Bergman points out, elf in “If e'er ye was in holy chapel, Or Christendom did see” – the English cultural and literary tradition frequently appears the Christian world is real and thus opposed to the shadowy as an otherworldly double [5], whose function is to specify fantastic fairy world. what is common, human and culturally approved, and thus “But the night is Hallowe’en, lady, The morn is separate it from what is inhuman, vicious and deviating from Hallowday” – Halloween night, as is known, is considered the cultural norm, i.e. to differentiate appropriate behavior the time when evil spirits are released from the spirit world patterns from the undesired or marginal models. In terms of realm into the physical world. gender, the semantics of elvish magic can be associated with “Just at the mirk and midnight hour” – as well as that of sexual temptations surrounding a man at the dawn of Halloween, midnight in folklore is a metaphor of border life. According to Hall, Anglo-Saxon ælfe (elves) were between the real and the imaginary. paradigmatically associated with seductive, feminine beauty, “At Miles Cross they maun bide” – the symbolism of a and for men relationship with them might mean crossroad conveys another image of Tam’s dual nature: he is compromising their authentic gender features [6]. Tam Lin living between the worlds, torn apart by the fairies and the submits to seduction under the spell of the The Queen o' humans. Fairies and indulges in unduly behavior, although realizing “My right hand will be glov'd, lady, My left hand will be that by doing so he is breaking away from the decent lifestyle bare” – in religious and cultural traditions left and right also and moral obligations. So, the words and phrases pertaining have spiritual meaning, and in mythology serve as to magic and witchcraft emphasize both the enjoyment and representations of past and future, or life and death. the danger of sexual freedom: elfin gray, The Queen o' The above-mentioned lexical units and symbolic elements Fairies, the pleasant fairy-land, fairy folk, unco, eerie. are employed to represent Tam’s ambivalence, and the However, in spite of all attraction and delight, the world of process of changing gender identity from the intermediate, elves is gloomy and frightening: We pay a tiend to hell. The immature and dependent position of the The Queen o' word “hell” is strongly negative as it means the evil citadel, Fairies’ captive to the cultural success as a noble knight, the place of punishment after death, and Tam’s retribution for husband and father. staying in the elves’ kingdom. Many of the above-cited words also have negative connotations; even the generic term IV. DISENCHANTMENT AS EVOLUTION OF MANLINESS “fairy” in the English culture denotes a supernatural creature There are several symbols that bear special significance that is if not entirely devilish, still rather sinister and in the though their gender semantics may be implicit and imbedded best case wily and mischievous, but mostly fatal for humans in the cultural context, for example, the word well, commonly (the question of differentiation between fairies and elves and defined as a hole in the earth or a natural source of water.
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