ABSTRACT
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 leaflets. 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.
