Audible Networks: Connecting Texts through Music in 16th-Century Swiss Printed Ballads

In recent years, researchers of early modern print culture, particularly those concerned with news circulation, have increasingly embraced network analysis to account for the flow of information across different regions and media. Even though most of these studies focus on people or cities as nodes and hubs in networks of news distribution, interrelations on a textual level, such as networks of co-citation, have received some attention as well. These approaches, as well as examples of textual network analysis in media history of more recent periods, can serve as inspiration for the study of early modern printed ballads.
Like in other printed objects, connections between different ballads can be discerned on a textual level, i.e. as adaptations of existing lyrics, quotation or the combination of several ballads in one print. However, and perhaps obviously, ballads can also be associated on a musical level. The practice of using already existing, popular melodies as a basis for a new text – commonly referred t

23-10-2020 10:55 - 11:25