This work describes an intellectual trajectory that can be traced from the interdisciplinary re-orientation of the humanities in Germany between 1975 and 1990 to similar issues being discussed in North America today. Its point of departure is the progression from the traditional positions of hermeneutics and reception aesthetics to new practices in the field of cultural history, central to which are concepts of sense and reality that motivated a fresh interest in the socio-historical contexts of literature and culture. On this basis, Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht develops a nontextual theory of narrative and advances a historical outline of canonized and non-canonized texts and cultural institutions in Europe from the Renaissance to the 20th century.