Abstract
This paper deals with the topic of the conversation with the dead, taken as a shorthand for the practice of literary history. In previous publications, Pieters tried to outline a number of important issues that can be subsumed under this topic, all of them revolving around the idea that literary texts are supreme sources of what is called the historical experience. In this paper, he addresses the question which textual mechanism (if any) procures this specific and special literary-historical experience.