Remediace literární lexikografie

Since the end of the 1990s literary lexicography has been undergoing a transformation brought on by the advent of the new digital media, in particular the Internet. The author argues that a fundamental shift has taken place particularly in the role played by the choice of headwords in the construction of a lexicographical work. The digital dictionary is not made ‘from the top down’ by filling in a pre-determined framework. Rather, it is an open, gradually growing structure, whose coordinates are previously unknown to the authors of the dictionary. Another completely new aspect is the position of the user of the digital dictionary, who is offered a number of choices by the interactive interface, which are impossible with a paper dictionary. The user thus becomes the co ‑author of the final organization of the dictionary. The transformation of literary lexicography is part of the cultural process of remediation, which entails a change in the symbolic forms of the expression of culture. The database, not the narrative, is now the fundamental form. An internet dictionary may therefore also be perceived as an alternative to the traditional narrative of literary history.