Kánon ako funkcia v autoreflexii systému literatúry

Systems theory offers the opportunity to model communication as a principle of the self-organization of social systems. It is a tool for observing the mechanisms and principles of the construction of social reality made visible in acts of communication. Until the 1980s, systematic study of the canon was, in the German environment, inhibited by a traditional understanding of the canon, according to which the canon contained the best works. Since the overcoming of this idea, the study of the canon has become more differentiated as part of the study of literature evaluation. In the literary scholarship of German-speaking countries in the 1980s, the research of the mechanisms and components of the literary canon was becoming increasingly impotent; there is research about the historical background of its construction and its position in contemporary society. A certain consensus already exists, e.g., in the rejection of opinions that explain the construction of the canon through the aesthetic qualities of particular artistic works, as practised by Harold Bloom. On the contrary, the thinking about the canon converges in the idea that the canon reflects social conditions, group interests, etc. There are several varieties of social background-based canon formation (postcolonial, gender, social, discourse analytical…); however, it is the textual aspects, and the aesthetic qualities of texts, that are undervalued as possible elements in the process of canonization, which is also typical for system-theoretical literary study in general, which accompanies and strongly influences canon research in Germany. My reflections will develop primarily in the context of the systems theory developed by Niklas Luhmann and its application on the study of literature as an autopoietic system.