The Politics of Songs in Eighteenth-Century Britain, 1723-1795

Horgan analyses the importance of songs in British eighteenth-century culture with specific reference to their political meaning. Using an interdisciplinary methodology, combining the perspectives of literary studies and cultural history, the utilitarian power of songs emerges across four major case studies. Its organizing theme derives from the story of the rescue of King Richard the Lionheart from imprisonment by the singing of his minstrel Blondel, which emerges in eighteenth-century ballad and music scholarship and again in the context of the French Revolution.