The Orthography of Czech Broadside Ballads from the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries

Abstract

The authors of this chapter present the first ever analysis of the orthography of Czech broadside ballads from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Aligning with the previous chapter by Pleskalová and Navrátilová, they show that the features of the language of broadside ballads in fact do correspond with the general orthography of Czech printers of the time, whatever their targeted class of consumer. They show that the orthography of Czech broadside ballads is influenced by a mixture of long-preserved archaic features and innovative tendencies (including the use of capitalization). The chapter also reflects the concurrence of both types of Czech black-letter typefaces typical for Czech printings from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (Schwabacher and Fraktur).