Broadside Ballads as a Printed Medium and the Rise of Literacy

Abstract

Kateřina Smyčková analyses broadside ballads in terms of their media properties. According to Smyčková the formal features of broadside ballads place them closer to oral communication than to written or printed dissemination; the latter, printed characteristics of the genre made sung Czech broadside ballads more suitable to “intensive” reading, by which she designates the reading of a small number of texts. This kind of reception is based on repetition, listening, memorizing, and internalizing of the printed words. However, broadside ballads also played a key role in the development of “extensive” reading, by which term Smyčková refers to widespread and silent reading of a great number of texts by a broader but more erudite audience.