Was bedeutet die Digitalisierung für den Gegenstand der Literaturwissenschaft?

One common assumption in the Digital Humanities is that one of its functions is to develop and apply new, computer-supported methods to address research topics in literary studies. Research questions in literary studies, however, are historically variable and highly dependent upon what one understands as the object of analysis: what is a text, and what is the point of investigating it? Such formulations are always the effect of media cultures, however. Using four characteristics as examples, this paper discusses the semantic transformation of the literary studies research object in connection with digitisation, and it advocates for an understanding of the Digital Humanities as the location of a fundamental methodological discussion about the nature of the literary object