Américo Paredes: Ballad Scholar (Phillips Barry Lecture, 2004)

The ballad scholarship of Américo Paredes (1915-1999), principally his book "With His Pistol in His Hand": A Border Ballad and its Hero, has been overlooked as a creative synthesis and expansion of the extant folklore theories and methodologies of its time. This essay closely examines Paredes’s book to demonstrate that synthesis and expansion. It also suggest the reasons why it may have been overlooked as a central contribution to ballad scholarship.