Gattungen als imaginäre Kontexte.

Today literary criticism contests the 'Volksbuch' as a genre since its criteria seem under-defined. This paper aims, from a functional point of view, to explain its historical success by tracing four histories of this genre. The under-definition of the genre turns out as the precondition of its manifold employments. What the different histories have in common is the imagination of the 'Volksbuch', which could unify the German nation. The 'Volksbuch', the paper will argue, is a virtual modern genre which imagines an anti-modern state of society and literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]