Archäologie der literarischen Kommunikation, II

Not everything that becomes the past is destined to be lost. There are methods of sanctification and tabooing that create a culture of sharp boundaries, solid contours, and lasting resistance to creeping change. Such procedures, which put an end to the flow of tradition, include canonization that determines what needs to be remembered and censorship that excludes what needs to be forgotten. The volume tries to fathom in individual case studies, which historical challenges are there, which put life - to speak with Nietzsche - under the contrast of burning and smoking. The cover picture represents an allegory of the Jurisprudentia. The ceiling painting by Rudolf Gleichauf in the Alte Aula of the University of Heidelberg (1886) symbolizes the connection between canon and censorship, in the sense of that Jewish tradition, according to which God knows book and sword, sefär we-sayif, from the sky.