The functions of peritexts in Danish-Norwegian news ballads of the 17th-19th centuries

The article analyzes the peritext of Danish-Norwegian news street ballads of the 17th-19th centuries – a genre of popular literature that combined printed text, illustrations, and sung performance. The purpose of the study is to identify the functions of the peritexts of Danish-Norwegian street ballads of the 17th-19th centuries in the context of the development of print media. The material consists of approximately 200 digitized pamphlets from the open corpus skillingsvisene.hf.ntnu.no. The scientific novelty lies in introducing a number of previously unstudied historical texts into literary scholarship. In addition, the article is the first in international Scandinavian studies to trace the evolution of the peritexts of Norwegian-Danish news ballads over two centuries and to identify and describe the patterns of genre development. The findings show that peritext performed advertising and meaning-generating functions, guiding the perception of news. Significant diachronic changes were identified: titles became shorter and increasingly resembled newspaper headlines; genre clichés became standardized and were sometimes even parodied. The data indicate a gradual separation of oral and written traditions and the transformation of the street ballad from a news medium into an entertainment genre under the influence of the developing newspaper culture.