Between Two Covers

Anthologizing can be a time-consuming and often overlooked scholarly endeavor. Yet the numerous members of the English department’s faculty who have been or are currently engaged in the process of putting together various kinds of anthologies find the work a rewarding and important responsibility. Simply walk around nearly any college campus, and you would soon notice the extent to which the work involved in creating anthologies has influenced the way literature is taught: as students lug from class to class the massive tomes that are often used as convenient — if not easily portable — pedagogical resources.

The sheer abundance of material, which tends to manifest itself in the familiar bulky form, is what many educators have found to be the most practical benefit of anthologies. With a single anthology, a survey class is able to confront literature on a broad scale, or a course in comparative literature is given access to a veritable cornucopia with which to work. The chance to have such a tangible influence on the field of literary studies offers one attraction for the faculty members involved with anthology projects. Professor Alison Booth, who co-edited the ninth edition of the Norton Introduction to Literature and is currently working on the tenth, says, “[Anthologizing] satisfies my interest in pedagogy; you find yourself writing to your audience.” Her co-editor and colleague, Professor Paul Hunter, has been involved with the Norton Introduction since its inception. From the start, the anthology was conceived as classroom textbook, and since the second edition it has included critical guidance for the novice student of literature. Hunter says the goal of the project is to offer “skills-based course with a progressive direction, from simple to complex. We think of the book as preparing for upper-division courses.”

Professors at the University of Virginia who have been involved in the creation of anthologies recognize the educational potential of their work and have used the opportunity to affect the field of literary studies — an aspect of anthologizing that can be both exciting and formidable. When Professor Deborah McDowell and her co-editors began the process of constructing the Norton Anthology of African American Literature, she says the task initially seemed daunting because there were no other anthologies on the market that attempted similar objectives. “We wanted to make an anthology that was conversant in the vernacular culture of African American literature, and so we included audio materials. To my knowledge it was the first anthology of its kind to do that,” says McDowell. Venturing into uncharted territory always presents one with new challenges, and it usually requires new tools to help plot the way. Anthologizing has thus gradually evolved its techniques, such as in the inclusion of new media, in order to adapt to the changing landscape of literary studies. 

Such innovative thinking is often the spur that incites the creation of a new anthology. While anthologies have traditionally assigned the nomenclature “English Literature” to a vast range of geographic, political, and ethic diversities, the editors of the Longman Anthology of British Literature, including Professor Jennifer Wicke, wished to challenge the ethnocentric generalization. By redefining “English Literature” as “British Literature,” Wicke says the goal the project was to create an anthology that “was seen as a geopolitical hybrid — containing within itself the frictions of literature, history, cultural and political conflicts — rather than one in which England was calling the political shots.” With this initial objective in mind, the editors went about constructing a culturally-driven anthology that brings attention to the whole of the British Isles, including the important contributions of Irish, Welsh, and Scots writers.

Professor Jahan Ramazani similarly thought a name change was appropriate when he was asked to update the Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry. In the third edition of the anthology, Professor Ramazani re-titled it the Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry and split it into two volumes: the first devoted to Modern poetry of the first half of the twentieth century, and the second volume containing postwar poetry up to the present. “An anthology like mine,” he says, “should to some extent reflect the current critical consensus in the field, while at the same time helping to shape and move it in new directions.” Like many of his colleague, Professor Ramazani sees the task of anthologizing as an opportunity to participate in the current climate of literary studies, while keeping a close eye on future developments.

Of course, not every advantage of an anthology is a purely educational one. While most anthologies are undoubtedly suited to the classroom, they can also provide a handy nexus of literature for the casual reader. An anthology offers a meeting place of diverse voices that can provide an individual with entertainment, solace, or meditation. Professor Lisa Spaar’s anthology Aquainted With the Night, a collection of insomnia poems, has located its audience primarily outside of the classroom. Likewise, her upcoming collection, All That Mighty Heart: London Poems, to be published by the University of Virginia Press in 2008, is a similarly thematic work which she says “will be of interest to anyone in love with or hoping to fall in love with London in all its complexity.”

No matter what the goals of the particular project, the task of anthologizing always requires careful judgment on the part of the editors. Professor Spaar would seem to speak for anyone involved in the anthologizing process in illustrating the work’s simultaneous joys and stresses: “It’s exciting to bring together people who might not be able to converse because of barriers of time and place, to set them together at table, to get them all drinking pints of Guinness or gin, and then imagine what sorts of conversations might transpire. . . . Of course at a certain point, wedding planning might be a more apt analogy than a house party for the anthologizing process. There are lots of compromises.”

The act of selection which characterizes the anthologizing process is indeed a delicate procedure. Deciding what to include and what to exclude in an anthology requires careful attention to a variety of factors. Beyond initial considerations of thematic content, there are matters of space and money involved. Certain works are simply too large to include in their entirety, and so selections must often be chosen that would be representative of the whole. Legal fees are a major determining factor, as works that remain copyrighted usually require a fee, and the fee often becomes more substantial if the work is owned by a large estate or publishing house. Furthermore, if the anthology is going to be used in a classroom setting, it is necessary to survey the field to find out what would be most valuable to the instructors who will be using the collection. Although such obstacles remain a consistent concern, the professors who have tried their hand at anthologizing find that the goal of the project is worth their vigilance. Beyond mere pragmatism, anthologizing seems to satisfy a deep-seated pleasure of those involved in the literary profession: that of sharing one’s favorite literature with as many people as possible.