Artes populares: Serial Amusement between the Effects of Genre and Medium in early Modernity (Artes Populares: Serielles Vergnügen in der Frühen Neuzeit zwischen Gattungs- und Medieneffekten).

This article examines the status of ‘Unterhaltung’ in early modern prose (novels, short novellas etc.) while focussing on the intersections of an evolving literary market and the production of new medial artefacts in 16th and 17th centuries. Following the traces of the emerging poetological discourse in the poetics as well as in the prefaces it offers a perspective on popular ‘arts’ in the literal sense of artes populares (Bodmer and Breitinger) which is to be characterized by an emphasis on seriality in terms of novelty and reiteration, a distinctive autoreflexive gesture and the promotion of an effective idea of fiction.