• Introduction; 1. Dating orality, thinking balladry: of minstrels and milkmaids in 1771; 2. How to do things with ballads: fieldwork and the archive in late-eighteenth-century Britain; 3. Tuning the multi-media nation: minstrelsy of the Afro-Scottish border; 4. How to do things with minstrels: poetry and historicity; 5. Minstrelsy, or, Romantic poetry; 6. Seven types of poetic authority circa 1800; 7. British Romantic mediality and beyond: reflections on the fate of 'orality'; Conclusion. Thirteen (or more) ways of looking at a black bird: or, poiesis unbound.

Review of the hardback: '[A] major book on poetry … A deeply theoretical book, it is still accessible and even lighthearted. … [This] book … has transformed the field and should be required reading. Aware that poets, antiquarians, ethnographers, linguists, folklorists, and more consider ballads their property, she draws upon all and does and admirable job of sorting among them, Her mastery of the subject and method surface time after time … just to be sure this book cannot be mistaken for an old-fashioned ballad study, she gives in-depth treatment to Mungo Park's 'Negro Song', styled an Afro-Scottish border ballad, and to 'Cherokee Death Song'. The paths she traces with them are too good to spoil by telling you; read the book.' Paula R. Backscheider, Studies in English Literature 1500–1900