Is it really necessary to explain what is new in literary history by breaking with established genre traditions? Do norm-breaking innovations in literature and the normative structure of a literary genre necessarily form opposites? What role do reference texts play in both the constitution of a literary genre and its overcoming? This volume, which emerged from the work of the research group 2305 ‘Discursivizations of the New’ and a conference organized by it, aims to question traditional linear narratives in literary historiography and to show in exemplary case studies how genres were transformed through complex resumption and modification of the previous tradition. The contributions in this volume, whose temporal horizon extends from antiquity to the early 19th century, also document how the often absolute time categories ‘old’ and ‘new’ in the definition of a genre must always be seen as relational and, precisely in their mutual interrelationship, make a decisive contribution to the genesis of genres.