Beyond the Literary Canon: Recontextualisation of Classical Texts in the Digital Environment

Abstract

Literary history is one of the most important, but also the most mysterious carriers of cultural memory. It is a place where a thousand-year-old columns stand side by side with dark labyrinths full of still undiscovered treasures. Hans Robert Jauss attempted to cross a gulf between the monumental, canonical literary history and historical reception of literature, with his theory of receptionaesthetic literary history (see Jauss 1970). I try to take another step forward and find a bridge across the imaginary gulf between the previous tradition of writing books of literary history and the ways of representing literary history in our era of digital media.