Spoilers for the new How To Train Your Dragon film ahead.
In one scene, two characters sing a love ballad together called "For the Dancing and the Dreaming". The lyrical style - male singer professing his love and offering various actions as proof of it, while the female singer rebuts his gifts and boasts - reminded me heavily of medieval love ballads. For the life of me, though, I can't find any examples.
Is there a name for this style/structure? Are there any examples that I've missed?
This isn't so much a direct response, but I hope you find this obscure, and eccentric, example interesting.
There was a convention in fourteenth-century Welsh poetry where a man would address his lover through the actions of an animal. This animal was to convey his admiration to the lady, and was called a llatai in Welsh. Dafydd ap Gwilym is the king of this poetry:
[There is] a girl ripe for far-flung praise:
fly around the rampart and the castle
and look if you may see her, Seagull,
a girl of Eigr's form, on the fair fortress.
Tell her my message of desire:
Let her choose me: go to the girl,
if she's alone, be bold enough to greet her,
be skilful with the gently-nurtured girl
to win advantage; say that I cannot stay alive -
a kind and cultured youth - unless I win her.
Quite the charmer. A variation on this theme is when Dafydd addresses his penis to convey the love:
By God penis, you must be guarded
with eye and hand
because of this lawsuit, straight-headed pole,
more carefully than ever now.
Cunt's net-quill, because of complaint
a bridle must be put on your snout
to keep you in check so that you are not indicted
again, take heed [you] despair of minstrels.
To me you are the vilest of rolling pins,
scrotum's horn, do not rise up or wave about,
gift to the noble ladies of Christendom,
nut-pole of the lap's cavity,
snare shape, gander
sleeping in its yearling plumage,
neck with a wet head and milk-giving shaft,
tip of a growing shoot, stop your awkward jerking,
crooked blunt one, accursed pole,
centre pillar of a girl's two halves,
head of a stiff conger-eel with a hole in it,
blunt barrier like a fresh hazel-pole.
Surprisingly, there is a response to this from a woman, one of the few female voice in medieval Welsh poetry. I won't print it here, as it's even ruder than the previous poem, suffice to say that one editor has titled it the wonderful "Vivat Vagina".
More generally, a female voice is rather unusual in medieval literature, but certainly not unknown. For more Welsh poetry go here, and for something more romantic, check out the troubadours from Provence.