Literary extinction. Lost literary genres and imagining the past.

We study disappearance as a literary historical phenomenon. There is a lot of discussion in the public about the preservation of biodiversity, but the form of transience we call literary extinction has received less attention. Our project aims to combat literary extinction and the impoverishment of literary genres by drawing attention to small historically lost genres. Our goal is to enrich the understanding of the historical and local diversity of literary genres; to create new ways of analyzing literary history and its changes, cultural memory and the formation of the canon through the trope of disappearance; analyze the processes of disappearance of minor (oral) poetry genres and traditions; and explore how the trope of loss creates space for imaginative and creative ways of filling in the gaps of history and reimagining history.