It is apparent that every linguistic and literary tradition will wish to
distinguish broad periods in its historical evolution. One way of
demarcating such periods is by isolating and identifying dominant
repertoires of texts, styles or types, which may be seen as preserving
repositories of material, promoting literary models, privileging formal
constraints, or inspiring theoretical reflections - or all of these. The
present collection of studies represents the results of a colloquium
held at the University of Groningen in 2001. The contributions range
widely in area, time, and theme: from general theory of acceptation into
the canon to particular case studies; from overall descriptions of
cultural repertoires to their very manufacture; from Ancient Mesopotamia
to the European avant-garde - taking in Homeric Greece, the Arabic
world, the Middle Ages, Renaissance Humanism, and modern Dutch
literature along the way.