popular culture, Early modern period, rural literature, literary circulation; Czech-Polish context

The study reflects different approaches of literary science to the literature of rural people, or to be more precise to works addressed to lower-class social groups (countryside, small town, farmers and craftsmen). Basic concepts with special regard to the Czech-Polish context are explained. The idea of folk literature in the works of romantic philologists, the approach of Marxists and their category of semi-folk literature will be mentioned. It also focuses on Bakhtin's concept of folk culture, carnivalesque and grotesque realism. Bakhtin's works had a considerable influence in Central Europe, yet they are also criticized today. The paper deals with the initiatives of interdisciplinary cultural history, as represented by Peter Burke and his work Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe. Impulses of Polish research, which usually does without the problematic term “people”, but uses a differentiated range of terms (sowizdrzalska literatura, literatura plebejska/rybaltowska), are crucial for the interpretation of rural literature of the early modern period. Above all, it works with the elaborate concept of popular culture and the concept of “literary circulation” (obiegi literatury) i.e. the idea of historically variable communication circuits and distribution channels. The conclusion of the study points out typical problems of interpretation associated with the research of rural literature and ask the question: what belongs to rural literature in the 16th and 17th centuries?