Open Challenges, Hidden Stories. The Power of Literary Histories
Open Challenges, Hidden Stories. The Power of Literary Histories

Summary/Abstract: The best of recent literary histories offer a new paradigm for the writing of literary histories and new criteria for the selection of relevant texts and materials. Together with interpretations, description of periods and portraits of authors and critics they also bring to the fore new paths and contexts for the historical trajectory of literature through cultural history. But most importantly, they unearth larger or smaller groups of hidden texts and authors, hitherto forgotten either for ideological or for theoretical reasons, and thereby they re-address the problem of remembering and forgetting as it shapes how we proceed to unravel the vicissitudes of literary and cultural history. Literary histories from the cultural margins on the old continents like Europe or from postcolonial cultures constitute important examples, and the same do literary histories of specific social groups, often in a cross-cultural and transnational perspective.

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