Literary history, news leaf lets, secular broadside ballads, occasional poetry, Humanism

Jan Malura deals with the origins of Czech secular broadside ballads. Malura argues that the earliest Czech broadside ballads display numerous links to other literary genres from urban society—so-called occasional poetry and especially news leaf lets. Such seeds of Czech broadside ballads, he observes, did not originate from the lower classes (whether urban or rural) but were rather a product of the culture of both Czech- and German-speaking burghers (that is, the well-to-do bourgeoisie) during the early modern period. Only later were news and other topics of Czech broadside ballads targeted en masse to the poor, with a particular focus on the rural poor.