New forms of digital publication also open up new perspectives for the creative reception of classical-canonical literature in a popular cultural context, as illustrated by an expedition into the colorful world of fanfiction, displaying, at the beginning of the 21^st century, a quasi-explosive dynamics. As a product of a programmatically eclectic, by definition intertextual, highly collectively-collaboratively oriented literary practice, fanfiction not only raises manifold general questions about authorship, the concepts of work and text, but also invites reflection on established cultural hierarchies. In this comparative literature research project, the genre is examined with a focus on its paradoxical relation to the classical canon: In dealing with a very heterogeneous literary subculture, in which not only Harry Potter & Co., but also Homer and Shakespeare, Goethe and Tolstoy, even the Bible are playfully rewritten, it aims at developing adequate literary- and cultural-theoretical tools for analyzing the fanfictional production and/as reception aesthetics.

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