Transnational, Intermedial and Computational Perspectives on European Popular Print

Dear Colleagues,

Early modern popular or cheap printing is now a consolidated field of study, based on decades of research. Its interest lies above all in the great cultural impact that its content has on early modern society, given its rapid and massive production, its multiple distribution channels, and its orality, which enabled it to overcome the barriers of illiteracy. The diversity, multiplicity, and wide reach of pliegos sueltos, broadside ballads, chapbooks, livrets bleus, centsprenten, canards and stampe efimere have led many specialists to claim that we are dealing here with early modern mass media. In recent years, this long-established field of study has undergone a profound renewal, with the adoption of three new approaches:

1. First, a transnational comparative perspective that transcends the traditional national boundaries that have limited research. The European approach to the phenomenon has made it possible to bring these popular collections into contact with each other and to identify contrasts and similarities between genres, contents or mechanisms of production and circulation. This comparative perspective has been reflected in numerous publications, scientific meetings, and the configuration of international research networks, such as the one coordinated by Jeroen Salman (U. Utrecht), "The European Dimensions of Popular Print Culture (1450-1900)".
2. Second, digital humanities approaches have given a remarkable boost to research by facilitating not only access to digitised print collections, but also the development of innovative analytical approaches based on the implementation of new technological tools. Good examples of this are catalogues and digital libraries such as the English Broadside Ballad Archive (https://ebba.english.ucsb.edu/), the Broadside Ballads Online from the Bodleian Libraries (http://ballads.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/), the Catálogo y Biblioteca Digital de Relaciones de Sucesos (https://www.bidiso.es/CBDRS/ediciones/buscador-basico/p/1), and Mapping Pliegos (http://biblioteca.cchs.csic.es/MappingPliegos/).
3. Thirdly, a dynamic new line of analysis of printed popular literature has adopted the perspective of intermediality, which goes beyond traditional textual analysis to emphasise the interaction, overlap, and constant modification between the textual, material, iconic, vocal, musical, and performative dimensions of print, with the aim of a deeper approach to the diversity of meanings and appropriations that chapbooks, canards, or pliegos sueltos might have fostered among their audiences.

One of the vectors on which these three innovative approaches to the study of ephemeral literature converge is the analysis of its visual, iconographic dimension. Indeed, the vast majority of cheap prints were illustrated with simple woodcuts. However, studies have paid little attention to this visual element, as they have traditionally focused on textual analysis. The above-mentioned historiographical renewal in the field of popular press studies has, among other things, highlighted this absence: the comparative perspective has brought to the surface the important role played by images in various European print corpora. Computational techniques have provided repositories of digitised collections and have created innovative image recognition tools that facilitate the large-scale analysis of prints. This intermedial perspective has highlighted the importance of the visual element in the construction of the meanings associated with popular print.

This Special Issue offers a collection of essays on these innovative lines of research in the context of cheap/popular print, demonstrating the benefits of a comparative approach, the possibilities offered by the use of new digital tools, and the impact of an intermedial approach on the circulation and adaptation of popular images.

Dr. Jeroen Salman
Dr. Juan Gomis Coloma
Guest Editors

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• European popular print
• popular images
• digital humanities approaches