Poetry Anthologies and the Creation of Canons: A Narrative of Power Relations and Aesthetic Choices

Introduction

Understanding the art of compiling a poetry anthology requires an awareness of the concept of narrativity in the whole process. Narrativity in the sense that, there are tools and a framework through which an anthology is a statement: either “political” or “aesthetic”. It is also a matter of considering the question whether an anthology is a “Grand Narrative” or a “Petite Narrative”, or could it be that the anthology is a constant struggle between the two narrative frameworks. It is also of considerable weight to give attention to the idea of the anthology as someone’s individual narrative of poetry which might explain the rise of certain trends in compiling an anthology. Those trends could reflect a kind of communal consensus or a total break from mainstream culture in an attempt to revolt against a consensus. All the previous concerns lead to other equally major questions about the relationship between anthologies and the cannon. Do anthologies belong to the cannon, or they are actually the canon, or could anthologies as narratives, “Petite Narratives”, defy the whole concept of the canon. However, if that is the case, is there still a need for anthologies in the first place, and if anthologies still exist as individual/ petite narratives, does it mean that there are more than one cannon? If the answer is positive, then why is the canon still needed if there are more than one canon which defeats the whole purpose of the concept and function of the canon? At this point it is also of importance to view poetry anthologies in their context: as an entertainment object for the general reader, and/o r one of the important reading corpora for literature students and the academia in general. Therefore, this paper aims at analyzing the three strands that determine the idea of the anthology as a narrative construct: Narrativity both as a concept and a tool, the Canon as a repertoire and as a periphery, and finally the Anthology criteria dominated by power relations or aesthetic standards. Thus, the paper is divided into three theoretical frames of reference that include Narrativity, the Canon, and Anthology criteria. The fourth part in the study is an analysis of selected poetry anthologies in an attempt to unfold the aesthetic standards and the power statements that manipulate choices of editors, and anthologists to either include or exclude certain poetic figures as well as poetic types. The anthologies tackled are Palgrave’s The Golden Treasury (1861), W.B.Yeats’s The Oxford Book of Modern Verse (1937), Michael Roberts’s The Faber Book of Modern Verse (1965), Paula R. Feldman’s British Women Poets of the Romantic Era (1997), Tanur Ojaide and Tijan M. Sallah’s The New African Poetry (2000) and The Defiant Muse French Feminist Poems From the Middle Ages to the Present (1986) edited by Domna C. Stanton.

The choice of the poetry anthologies is not haphazard, nor is the dictates of the links between the anthologies at question and the significant organization of concepts in the following parts. The first is Palgrave’s The Golden Treasury (1861) whichcorresponds to historical dimension in compiling an anthology. The two Modern Poetry anthologies, on the other hand, respond to the aesthetics of modernism, ‘a manifesto’ as Pound describes it. However, The New African Poetry (2000) is an anthology based on the idea of ethnicity. It gives voice to African poetry translated into English form all over the African continent. The Defiant Muse (1986)and British Women Poets of the Romantic Era (1997) are two anthologies for feminist poetry. The shift from the historical, to the manifesto, to the more marginalized groups as in the case of both the ethnic and the feminist, highlights the shift in the anthologies’ aesthetics and power statements. The anthology that started as a collection of the different literary ages’ best representative works and makes an essential component of the English literary canon as in the case of Palgrave’s The Golden Treasury, turns at the hands of the modernists who could be viewed as the closed circle of elitist academics into a manifesto of the modernist movements aesthetics and aims. The modernist anthologies in this context when compared to Palgrave’s selected inclusion of the representative works is mainly based on exclusion rather than inclusion. Exclusion of all poetic texts that do not reflect the movement’s aesthetics as set by its founders. On the other hand, the other three anthologies focus on presenting what was once neglected and excluded from the selection lists. Ethnic and feminist works find their places in a new shift of the anthologies’ aesthetics when anthologists decide to give voice to the marginalized and the neglected. The third shift here marks not only aesthetic conflict as might be the case in the modernist anthologies and the historically based ones, but also the power statements that the ethnic and the feminist anthologies’ make. The analysis of the anthologies, show the influence of certain criteria on the anthologists and editors’ choices. These influences reflect the ambivalent relationship between exclusion and inclusion, the anthology as a narrative of power, the anthology as an aesthetic manifesto defining a literary movement and the anthology as a conflict site between Grand and Petite narratives.

  Narrative Constructs: A Reference and a Tool:

In his article “A Commentary: Constants and Variables of Narratology” (2001) Gerald Prince highlights one of the essential dilemmas of narratology: mainly the different forms of the representations of narrative and also whether narratives are different from storytelling and finally the difference between a narrative and some description of action (230). What is of significance in Prince’s work is problematizing the nature of narrativity in terms of verbal and non-verbal narrative, the role of interpretation in narrative, the role and perspective of both the narrator, and the receivers. In addition, Prince draws attention to the “narrative model” as well as “narrative tools”. The idea of the variety of narrative media correlating with the wide range of narrative expression is also one of the important concepts to be considered with regard to narrativity (232). However, narration triggers also further problems related to the relationship between narrative and knowledge.

Narrative, Religion, and Science: Fundamentalism versus Irony, 1700-1999 (2002) by Stephen Prickett, quotes Lyotard’s definition of narration to explain the relationship between narration and knowledge. Jean- François Lyotard defines narration as: “the quintessential form of customary knowledge” (Lyotard qtd. in Prickett 19). Narration used to be the essential form of knowledge throughout the ages; however, in the postmodern world, the idea of plural narratives became a central means for knowledge. The absence of grand narratives in Lyotard’s postmodern world is replaced as Prickett describes it by a negative Grand Narrative that denies the whole idea of Grand narratives in the first place.  Adding to this, Prickett explains that Lyotard is more interested in “paralogy” rather than the limited idea of a Grand Narrative. Paralogy as explained by Prickett is a discontinuity that does not merely reveal a false reason, but more importantly the whole false idea that there could be any coherence promoting the idea of the ontological plurality (22). Even scientific knowledge does not escape Lyotard’s idea of discontinuous narratives, stressing the importance of a narrative structure rather than the content of that knowledge even for scientific knowledge. Thus, Grand Narratives are contrasted to Petite Narratives which Lyotard stresses as the basic structure of narratives, even scientific ones.

Prickett refers to the idea of the narrative science as not totally objective as usually claimed, but it is more of a narrative with agenda and literary presuppositions. Thus, narrative or rather narrativity dominates and forms myth, literature and even science. An analysis of narrative as a medium reveals that it should be both given consideration and questioned at the same time. Since narrative is a medium, Prickett explains that limitations of language and culture interfere with narrative choices. These control the way narrators choose to unfold their narratives in terms of plot as well as purpose. The idea of having a plot in itself, involves an order of things that leads to a certain conclusion. The arrangement a plot implies is also related to purpose. Purpose is an explanation of the reason for action and events. Even in scientific narratives Prickett gives examples of narratives that reflect the choice of purposive language giving meaning to apparently unplanned fragmented events. Thus, it can be said that narrativity whether Grand or Petite works through medium and the medium itself is influenced by culture, language, purpose; the text is a medium for self-search and self-construction, determines to a great extent what narrativity is. This leads again to the idea that every arrangement or selection is a narrative choice. Thus, applied to poetry anthologies, readers should be aware of the narrative choice within the anthology.

The Anthology and the Canon: A Historical Inclusion:

Earl R. Anderson’s “Defining the Canon” (2001) stresses the idea that making the canon involves a process of selection. The selection targets samples of representative exemplary work that becomes a frame of reference by a consensus agreement. Anderson explains that consensus in the context of the canon includes group work of educators, students as well as society in general. However, he considers that representative samples and consensus is in itself an illogical defect since the canon becomes based on an exclusive selection while it should be based on characteristics of the literary work. In Anderson’s point of view, the canon should include all literary works because of their characteristics, not because of certain exemplary attributes chosen by a general consensus. It is important in Anderson’s perspective to understand and be aware of the canon as a set of rules in the Greek sense of the word, which implies a framework or a frame of reference, and the canon as a number of texts that are representative of certain standards as well as the reflection of power relations that echo certain social and institutional conventions and traditions (11442).

The difference between extensional and intensional approach to the question of canonicity is another significant issue. Accordingly, Anderson argues that the extensional approach focuses on the canon more as a “label”, as he describes it, more than a description of some attributes which is therefore, the field for power games of conventions, traditions, bourgeois culture and assumptions. This in Anderson‘s point of view, is the conflict and illogical impossibility of the canon as the center and the margin which are the works that are excluded from the canon. However, the conflict between the center and the margin could be resolved as Anderson believes, if the canon adopts an intensional approach that would include and accept all literature based on attributes rather than labels or assumptions (1443).

Anderson’s conceptualization of the canon as a label for some representative works, is significant, when applied to The Golden Treasury of the Best Songs and Lyric Poems in the English Language (1861) edited by Francis Turner Palgrave. Palgrave’s anthology is a revealing example of the ambivalent relationship between the canon and the anthology. It embodies the idea of consensus as will be shown through the analysis of his introduction, yet it also reflects the biases of the anthologist that reveal the illogical defect of the idea of consensus as explained earlier by Anderson. The coming paragraphs are a close reading of the criteria behind Palgrave’s representative labels.

The Golden Treasury of the Best Songs and Lyric Poems in the English Language (1861) selected and arranged by Francis Turner Palgrave starts with a dedication to Alfred Tennyson.  In his dedication to Tennyson, Palgrave declares the purpose of his anthology: a source of entertainment and a companion to noble pleasure. He further describes his anthology as a guide to unnoticed beauty with the company of the most accomplished minds. Palgrave’s description of his book and the language he uses to pinpoint the purpose of the anthology reveal how he as an anthologist thinks of the function and purpose of the anthology. Keeping in mind that The Golden Treasury is one of the first anthologies that established the anthology as a genre on its own; it is of significant importance to also consider Palgrave’s dedication to Alfred Tennyson as even giving more credit to the choices and selections of the anthology.

Palgrave in the Preface sets the criteria of his selection. The first criterion regards the range of inclusion or better expressed exclusion the editor makes. He says that the anthology includes all the best and most valued lyrical songs written in English even if those lyrics are already known and appreciated by poetry readers and mostly for dead poets. Palgrave insists that his anthology includes only lyrical poetry that responds to his specific definition of lyric. In Palgrave’s definition of Lyric, he limits it to poetry that expresses a single emotion, idea, or situation. Singularity and focus of purpose are Palgrave’s second major criteria for selection in his anthology. Therefore, he excludes narrative, dramatic, descriptive and humorous poetry on the basis that it is not lyrical in the strict definition of the term, as he defines it. The third criterion is related to the idea of the “best” poetry as Palgrave points out in his dedication to Tennyson. However, the question at this point is about Palgrave’s definition of the “best”. The choice of the “best” lyrics depends, according to Palgrave, on three elements: the repeatedly valued and appreciated lyrics throughout time in which the whole effect of the lyric counts more than the parts and should be one of the criteria for appreciation. To achieve this, the editor consulted two friends of ‘good judgment’ to guarantee consensus rather than individual preferences, the third criterion involves the guidance of Tennyson.

The Golden Treasury excludes contemporary poetry not only on the basis that it could be offensive to contemporary voices if the criteria of exclusion and inclusion are applied; it is also based on withholding a judgment that the editor considers belonging to the future rather than the present. Contemporary pieces, in Palgrave’s point of view, should be left to be judged by the future. Palgrave points out that he was careful to include complete works, and if there are very few cases in which the work is incomplete, it is only due to excluding the parts that contradict the first criterion of choice as a lyric. Thus, unity is the governing rule. If there are parts excluded, then those parts are not parts of the unity of the lyric. He also explains that chronological sequence is followed in dividing the anthology into four books starting from the 1600s until the mid-nineteenth century. The preface ends with a note on the “treasures” poetry offers that are described in Palgrave’s words to be “more golden than gold” (xii). Palgrave’s criteria clearly respond to Anderson’s extensional approach to the canon; an approach that focuses mainly on labeling and inclusion as a historical panorama.

  The Anthology and the Rise of the Novel (2000) by Leah Price, on the other hand,discusses the work of compilers in the twentieth century. Price argues that the work of compilers focuses mainly on abridging the most significant works for the sake of keeping a compact library of only the most significant. Compilers in this context, as Price explains, are respectable people who could be viewed as any nation’s heroes since their work is based on compiling, abridging and expurging. Therefore, morals are the main feature of their work. Anthologies function in different everyday life aspects. They make the most common appearance and definition of poetry in the mass market; they are the most acknowledged in poetry courses across the academia and extracts of poems and references to literary characters and pieces have become part of popular culture ranging from advertisements to card games.                                                                         

Anthologies pose an important question about the art and theory behind the genre itself. Anthologists have limited tools such as abridging or excerpting or compiling. Applying those same tools to Palgrave’s The Golden Treasury, reflects his work as a compiler. Palgrave’s main work in his anthology is based on compiling and abridging the most significant texts in an attempt to preserve the most significant and most valuable as his title reveals; and his anthology became as Price identifies the work of anthologists, the first and most popular source for academics, as well as general readers.

“On Anthologies”(2008) by David Hopkins, describes Palgrave’s The Golden Treasury as dominating the study of poetry for a long time. Palgrave’s domination in Hopkins’s point of view is in terms of the latter adopting Tennyson’s point of view of poetry and its representation. This involves for example Tennyson’s vision of what a poem should be, and his exclusions of certain types of poetry and his inclusion of certain poets rather than others (292). These issues reflect Tennyson’s choices and interpretations that influenced students of English poetry for two centuries as Hopkins believes.

 The Anthology as a Manifesto:

Modernist poetry anthologies are a unique case in the art of anthologies. They mark a shift in interests, taste and even the human experience and condition. In order to understand how modernist anthologies work and what their purpose is, it might be of significance to understand their theoretical framework. Nichols’s “Ezra Pound’s Poetic Anthologies and the Architecture of Reading”(2006) comments on the art of anthologizing that was booming after World War One. In Nichols’s opinion the spread of anthologies during that period at the hands of literary reviewers, anthologists and poets, was part of introducing and defining the new literary movements of the time. The ‘new’ was a challenge to traditional literature in both its style and ideology. The new anthologies targeted middle class university and high school students as well as the general reader. Nichols maintains that anthologies at that time were supported by prefaces, appendixes, biographies and outlines. The function of those modernist anthologies, as Nichols explains, was to introduce a multiple varied poetic experience both to the general reader and to academics (171). Those anthologies highlighted the idea that readers could have different multiple interpretations of literary works as well as a varied experience of poetic works.

Nichols categorizes poetry anthologies into two types: Mainstream anthologies which represent modernist literature as part of the canon and seek to find its place within the previous literary tradition. Those anthologies, in Nichols’s point of view, promote for the return of the ballad, and the folkloric songs and make of Robert Frost, Walt Whitman and Edwin Arlington Robinson the leading examples of that type of anthologies. Unlike mainstream anthologies, “Coterie” anthologies, as Nichols refers to them, represent another type of anthologies where modern poetry is presented to the readers as difficult and as breaking from earlier literary tradition both in form and in content. In that sense, “Coterie” anthologies sought to make readers focus on the poems as texts without any reference to or interest in the poems’ historical, political or biographic context that might influence the readers’ reception of the poem(s).

Ezra Pound represents another phase of anthologies. According to Nichols, Pound published four anthologies from 1914 to 1933; those anthologies are a different type of anthologies that differ from both the mainstream and the Coterie anthologies. Pound neither attempts to contextualize poems as mainstream anthologies do, nor does he leave it totally to the reader to figure out the significance, meaning and interpretation of the poems themselves. The main feature that distinguishes Pound’s anthologies is his insistence on the relationship between poets and readers. In other words, he emphasizes the readers’ role in interpreting the poems in his anthologies. To that aim, he would not provide critical assessments, or bibliographical references, but he would organize the poems thematically and stylistically in a manner that would direct the readers to ways of reading texts. Pound’s anthologies subvert the established concept of mainstream anthologies based on contextualization and editorial references. He also gives the readers a new role as pointing out that one of the main features of modern poetry is to recognize the difficulty of modern poetry and to teach readers that re-reading modern text is an essential methodology for any attempt to interpret and appreciate these modernist texts. Thus, readers are rewriting tradition and the canon as well as reassessing and restructuring tradition (175). In his later anthologies, Pound tends to lean more towards the mainstream anthologies in Nichols perception of the word. Albeit Pound’s unwavering insistence and belief that modernist poetry is difficult, he tries to help readers by providing some editorial guidance especially that anthologies have become accepted as a main component of literature and poetry courses in universities and colleges addressing students and academics, which makes it plausible to label his later anthologies as mainstream. To summarize, anthologies for Pound are literary manifestoes that explain and define the new poetry. Therefore, Nichols compares Pound’s emphasis on interactive anthologies with the present day’s idea of anthologies as:

 Today's anthologies need not choose either extreme position or a passive-aggressive editorship that can appear alternately encouraging and hostile to readers. Today's compilations, with accompanying Web sites and compact discs, promise a level of interaction that can encourage readers to question the master narratives of literary culture, particularly the task of selecting pieces representative of an era. If we follow Pound's lead and question the anthology's goal of comprehensiveness, we might consider how current anthologies' Internet sites and CDs enable the manipulation of interpretive notes (183).

The different types of anthologies reflect different ideologies and master narratives and they represent an ongoing dialogue between master and petite narratives when it comes to the art of compiling and anthologizing. W.B.Yeats’s The Oxford Book of Modern Verse (1937) and The Faber Book of Modern Verse (1965) edited by Michael Roberts are two modernist anthologies that exemplify the anthology as a Manifesto. Both anthologists focus on defining and sampling what modern poetry is. The two anthologies are manifestoes outlining modern poetry. Yeats and Roberts set a number of criteria for their anthologies. Both consider modern poetry’s unique character. Roberts sees the particular character of modern poetry in its projection of personal experience and feelings that might not appeal to others which explains why it is met with “indifference” in some cases. Yeats also refers to poetry works at the beginning of the century in which in his point of view, poets did not venture on new themes, and they were competing with their predecessors and focused on the country side, life in the sea, the traditional country ballads, or imitated Virgil. Therefore, he refers to certain names that have exerted considerable influence on the poetic scene. To do this, he attempts to trace the recurrent metaphors and images in some modernist poets’ works such as Edith Sitwell and T.S. Eliot. Poets like Edith Sitwell are influenced by what Yeats describes as: “the soulless self-reflections of man’s skill” (xviii) which Yeats interprets as an attempt to escape the monotony no other man felt all through the previous ages, which in Sitwell’s work turns into twisting language to an artificial liveliness to force expression in that particular personal unusual mood of hers. He stresses for example the image of a kind of a hallucinatory dream world that dominates modernist works such as that of Sitwell. He also traces the recurrent image of the “star” in more than one modernist work and explains it as a symbol for the aspiration for something pure and steady. The image of “bones” is another recurrent image that appears, as Yeats shows,   in a number of poems by modernists to signify the pain and suffering of the body.

Tracing influences and eminent voices is another criterion both Yeats and Roberts adopt. Yeats comments on some eminent poetic figures such as T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound as influential figures that set the taste and trends of the period. For instance, he gives a commentary on some of Eliot’s works such as “The Wasteland” and traces Eliot’s development from “The Wasteland” towards “The Hollow Men” and “Ash Wednesday”. Yeats refers to the concept of the “Essential Form” which reduces everything to the basic core. In this context Yeats refers to Eliot as resembling Alexander Pope being more of a satirist than a poet and describes Eliot’s poetry as “grey, cold , dry” ( xxi) just as the life devoid of feelings it describes. Yeats continues in his introduction to The Oxford Book of Modern Verse (1937) to focus on poets and voices which he considers representative of modern verse. He comments on Ezra Pound’s work focusing on The Cantos. He stresses Pound’s unusual style and draws the attention to Pound’s flux either as a theme or as a technique. He admires Pound’s ability to go back and forth in terms of fragmented non sequential structure and themes. Yeats also comments on Turner, Walter Pater, and Dorothy Wellesley putting them in the context of the “flux” that dominates the modern world whether that “flux” is external or internal.

 Roberts considers that the poetry examples included are not representative of the best poetry in the age, but rather as examples of the “most significant” as he puts it. To elaborate, one of the basic criteria for anthologies is exclusion versus selection and representativeness / or labeling. Roberts creates his own “petite narrative” of modern poetry, creating his own framework, ‘Truth’ and purpose. Roberts takes W.B. Yeats as an example; he refers to Yeats’s particular use of legend and myth, political overtones, his very unique use of images and unfamiliar personal allusions which make Yeats the founding father of some modernist works. Roberts reveals some of his criteria for selection such as in the case of older poets whose earlier works are not included, while their later works are included on the basis of what he describes as “significant development”(2) . Yeats’s and Roberts’s anthologies represent two different versions of modernism oscillating between the Mainstream anthologies and the Coterie ones; either defining a movement to a closed circle or disseminating that movement into the mainstream canon is a question that remains unanswered.

Anthologies: Aesthetics/ Power statements:

  Anthologies according to David Hopkins as discussed in “On Anthologies Author (s)”(2008)are constructs of “commercial “and “practical” reasons. Anthologies based on thematic arrangement are among the common ones such as anthologies about love, animals, birds, flowers, war, travel, music and many other topics. However, Hopkins distinguishes between two types of readers as well as reasons for anthologies. In Hopkins point of view one of the main reasons for anthologies is to help readers to overcome stress, or during times of grief, as an outlet for different emotions, a celebration of life’s events and for entertainment as well. Those are the interests and the reasons for the common reader which Hopkins refers to as the “trade anthologies”.  However, the “inclusive anthologies” as Hopkins describes them such as the Oxford, Faber, Penguin, and Everyman, are also the common interests of any reader and academic ones. For the common reader, they serve the purpose of completing the picture of the components of a decent household. On the other hand, for the academic reader such compilations serve a very important purpose. Anthologies are based on a choice theory and they employ prioritization, selection and rearrangement. Teachers and students would never be able to address all the aspects and details of a literary work because of time limits and module requirements. Therefore, they always go under the process of anthologizing, and when they do, this entails questions about selection, inclusion, exclusion and evaluation of a huge corpus. This process, in Hopkins’s understanding, is determined by other options and other anthologizing processes (285-6). Thus, although teachers and students choices might be completely aesthetic, these choices are largely those of anthologists who might have various agenda. This leads also to the question of what is chosen to be taught and read for both students and teachers alike. 

According to Hopkins classification, academic anthologies are divided into four types; these are: comprehensive period anthologies, formal and generic collections, critical anthologies and period anthologies (291). Hopkins draws the attention to some considerably important questions: He poses questions about whether anthologizing serves particular “critical agendas” as he describes it or particular political ones since the question of anthologizing is also related to “historicism” that controls the scene in the current academia (294). He also poses questions about anthologies that do not consider themselves as representative of particular periods or type of poetry, but rather as representing poems in terms of separate poetic utterances not related to their cultural, political, and social context. (295). Hopkins analyzes The Oxford Book of English Verse compiled by Christopher Ricks. He compares between Ricks’ third edition of the book and his predecessors such as Quiller Couch. For Hopkins the interesting point of Rick’s compilation that distinguishes him from his predecessors is Rick’s acknowledgement that his book is not the end of English poetry and that it will always be replaced and other poetry books will be produced. However, Hopkins attempts to list the motives behind Ricks’ compilation in the following reasons:

• He included “translations and passages from verse drama”.(295)
• “Passages alluded to by the literate community both in his day and after”.(295)
• “Passages given currency by either past critics or anthologists”. (295)
• “Personal choices of the anthologist reflecting his personal taste as well as the age’s preferences”.   ( 295)

The New Oxford book of English Verse compiled by Dame Helen Gardner (1972) sets also some rules for poetry anthologies. Gardner explains that personal choices of the anthologist do not only reflect his personal taste but a kind of agreement amid the literary circle as well as his contemporaries on certain poems. This entails according to Gardner the exclusion or sacrifice of some types of poetry as well as a change in the definition of what the “best” poetry is a stretching out of the concept of lyrical poetry and an interest in the poets’ reputation that might play a role in what the “best” poetry is. (Hopkins 295)

Hopkins poses an important question about Rick’s compilation when he considers Dryden’s case in particular. He poses the question whether Rick’s compilation of Dryden’s poetry is a manifestation of Dryden’s representative characteristics, or there is no premeditated reason for choosing to collect Dryden’s poems the way they are collected. This leads to another more important question. Hopkins refers to Norbook Merton’s The Penguin Book of Renaissance Verse raising many considerable questions about “contextualization” of anthologies and poetry in general in historical contexts and within the modern literary scene well as relating the poems not only to their historical contexts but to their sociopolitical one as well. Norbook according to Hopkins defends the idea of reading poetry not as a reflection of its period and time but rather as a participant of the period and its choices. (298). For Norbook as Hopkins explains what matters is not the “representation” of certain genres but rather the “representation” of the ideology that transcends the two poles of   either reducing the cannon into consensus or the   under representation of some voices. Hopkins also refers to Norbook’s concern of the composition of the canon and representative literary writing on the basis of ideology whether political or cultural rather than literary, to the extent of attributing positive literary qualities to works that are considered ideologically acceptable by the anthologist ( 300).  Therfore, Hopkins refers to Samuel Johnson as an example who applies the “test of time” when he considers literary works of any importance. He believes that works that endure time and different comparisons with other works through the different time periods are the worthy ones (300). Hopkins explains that Johnson’s “test of time” defies the idea that anthologies are mainly “representative” texts, since the “test of time” does not reflect the taste and fashion of a certain period of time, but rather the durability of certain passages that have outlived the transience and particularity of certain times, and reflect the common and universal element that exceeds periods and fashion.   However, Hopkins triggers a number of concerns against Johnson’s “test of time”. Johnson proposed a century to judge the durability of texts that survive time. However, Hopkins points out that the whole idea of “the test of time” is unreliable since it basically depends on human nature and the interpretations of that nature moreover, it does not count for periods of absence of certain works that could be revived later.

Whether adopting Norbooks’s, Hopkins’s or Johnson’s criteria for selection or not, the significant issue about that whole argument between the different previous authors, is the idea that what is presented to the readers of poetry, does not always reflect aesthetics or even characteristics of the poetry itself. Poetry selections are manipulated by power games, aesthetics, periods of time and many other variables. Thus anthologies should not be taken for granted as innocent representative selections.

The New African Poetry An Anthology (2000) edited by Tanure Ojaide and Tijan M. Sallah is an anthology that represents poetry with a distinctive ethnic tone and echoes the influence of power games discussed earlier in anthologies compilations. The anthology is divided into four sections responding to the four divisions of Africa: Central and East Africa, North Africa, Southern Africa, and West Africa. The editors classify the poets not only according to regions, but also according to generations as well. Therefore, the contextual aspect of the works is stressed. The anthology focuses on the works of the “third generation” as Ojaide and Sallah describe them showing the genealogy of their works and how the third generation exceeds the older ones.

The New African Poetry discusses the two earlier generations and their influence on the poetry of the “third generation”. Thus it is important to consider Africa’s extensive oral tradition as one influential source of the new African poetry. The first generation of poets according to Ojaide and Sallah were interested in refining their authorial craftsmanship following European style. Those poets wrote during the colonial period and were not sensitive to the relationship between the colonizer and the colonized such as Dennis Osadebay’s “Young Africa’s Thanks”. They wrote about race, Christianity and heroism and used Biblical and Greco -Roman references (1). The second generation on the other hand, lived during Africa’s strife for independence especially by the end of the colonial period in the fifties and sixties. That generation was influenced by the best European examples such as T.S Eliot, Ezra Pound, W.B Yeats and Gerald Manley Hopkins (2). That generation includes poets from the Anglophone, the francophone and from Arab Africa.

The poets in that generation reflected through their poetry the conflict with the colonial heritage as well as the dual mixed feelings they had towards both their true African identity. The tension between the influence of the colonial reality and their African voices is one major characteristic of the second generation’s poetry. Poetry in that period is known to be sarcastic. It ridicules the transitional modern period that overwhelmed true African identity.   Political satire is one major theme for that generation. The second generation reflects disappointment as Ojaide and Sallah argue because of the corruption and conflicts African countries witness after the colonial period. The third generation is the focus of The New African Poetry. That generation is well trained in their elder generation’s craft; however, they later develop their own style and crafts and rebel against their elders’ tradition. The third generation attempts to go back to their African and regional roots in a rebellious act against their elders’ adaptation of the Western style (3).

The poetry of the third generation as presented through the sixty two poets included in the anthology differs in themes and style from earlier generations who grew up during the colonial period and the struggle for Africa’s independence. The third generation is less sensitive than the earlier ones to African traditions and culture and more open to criticize them than earlier generations. The circumstances the third generation lived through are different from their earlier generations. The post-colonial period in Africa witnessed civil wars, political instability and socio economic challenges. These circumstances are different from the earlier colonial scene. Therefore, the third generation writes about a different social, political and economic situation (4). The poets tend to focus on their national regions rather than the continent as a whole. The sociopolitical and economic conflicts provide the third generation poets with rich subject matter, and in many examples, the poets tend to take the side of the oppressed, the marginalized and the underprivileged against a few rich elite who have power and privileges. It is no longer a struggle against colonial oppression; it is rather inspiring the people of Africa and motivating them not to give up hope for change. The third generation poets believe in their role as agents of change and development. Feminist African poetesses for example play a significant role in defying cultural taboos as part of the third generations’ cultural enlightenment (5). Considering The New African Poetry anthology, the narrative of colonial and post-colonial relationships could not be ignored or overlooked. Ojaide and Sallah as anthologists select poetry examples that embody post- colonial concerns, attitudes and sentiments. The selections in the anthology give utterance again to poetry as a political statement and even aesthetic tend to respond to the third generation poets’spolitical statements. This echoes in a sense Lyotard’s communal narrative that turns by time into a Grand narrative. Thus, The New African Anthology as a petite narrative turns by time into a Grand narrative of post- colonial relationships.

Narrative as a Power Statement:

Narrative, Religion and Science Fundamentalism versus Irony 1700-1999 (2002) by Stephen Prickett stresses the increasing interest in storytelling in the different disciplines which he explains as some willingness to be part of something that might be useful in addressing problematic issues on an epistemological level. However, storytelling itself poses one major problem, whether the story is a petite “individual” narrative, or a Grand “communal” one. In this respect it is useful to consider feminist narratives or truths as an attempt to a form of petite narrative that defies metanarratives. It is giving voice to feminist poetry as one form of the struggle for plurality. The Defiant Muse French Feminist Poems from the Middle Ages to the Present (1986) is a unique kind of anthology. The editor of the anthology Domna C. Stanton, intended to edit a bilingual anthology of “feminist” poetry not merely women poetry that was included sporadically in poetry anthologies. The Defiant Muse is a series of anthologies that compile feminist poetry in four major languages: French, English, German and Italian. Stanton’s anthology is bilingual compiling both English and French feminist poetry. The purpose of the anthology is to give voice to feminist poetry that was never recognized or even subdued. Stanton says that one of the most important achievements of her anthology is recognizing feminist poets and introducing them to their own countries’ audience. The anthology reveals links between feminist poetry across the different ages that surpass differences of culture and social classes and even time (xiii).

The main antithesis in women literature as Stanton describes it, is the one between the image of women as Mary vs. Eve, Penelope vs. Sirens, or the angel vs. the monster. The idea of restricting women to those dualities is also reflected on another level; the articulate and the voiceless female; the female subject and the female object. Those dichotomies have influenced and tainted female writing over the different ages. However, in order to understand those either or dichotomies, Stanton believes that they should be put in their larger context. She explains that literature has been always perceived as a kind of an esoteric cult. The practice of literature and particularly of poetry has been exclusively for men either in ancient bardic tradition, or the Christian priesthood. Therefore, any transgression from the part of females is met with extreme rejection and contempt. If women attempt to penetrate the closed secret circle of patriarchal dominance, they are doomed to silence (xvi).  

The inferior language of prose has been what patriarchal culture approved for female writers. This explains the development of the novel on the hands of women writers, while female poetesses remained in the shadow. Stanton quotes Virginia Woolf’s opinion on the development of the art of the novel. According to the latter, the novel was still a new unmolded art, therefore, it had a room for women writers to mold it, shape it and set its rules, unlike other forms of literature that have long been dominated by patriarchal influence (xvi). However, the situation did not remain the same for long, and women studies in the seventies and eighties started to give attention to poetesses of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Stanton on the other hand criticizes the interest given to poetesses of those two centuries only on the grounds that this kind of attention overlooks poetesses of other times and other cultures. Therefore, it becomes one of the main concerns of The Defiant Muse to shed light on the works of different poetesses of the various ages who belong to different cultures. This in her point of view would include more scope that allows poetesses of the periphery to be recognized as the center ones are (xvi).

The task of compiling a poetry anthology is not an easy one, let alone compiling a feminist poetry anthology. The criteria Stanton adopted in her anthology are basically different from previous feminist anthologies as she herself states. She says that she intentionally excluded the works of three poetesses: Marguerite Clerbaut, Anne Hebert, and Simone Weil. The exclusion is justified by Stanton because of the ideological difference between Stanton’s narrative of a feminist anthology and those women poets. She refers to Jeanine Mounin’s La Poesie Feminine (1963-66) as an example of a feminist anthology she refuses. Mounin’s anthology presents a feminist narrative against Stanton’s. The former focuses on presenting a female version based on the relationship between the married couple, the joys of maternity or emotional expression of love and the fears of loneliness. Mounin’s female figures according to Stanton are not involved in abstract issues or social and political questions. They never rebel against their subversion or marginalized existence. Mounin’s narrative condemns any assertive version of feminism or even denies its existence in the first place as Stanton states. Therefore, Stanton disagrees ideologically with that version and attempts to “determin[e] by the texts selected for inclusion what image for a poetic tradition is created” (xvii).

The criteria determining selection in The Defiant Muse confirm the subversion and negation of any patriarchal version of femininity. The anthology as Stanton points out gives voice to texts that defy any patriarchal clichés of feminist’ interests or tone that usually focus on marriage, motherhood or any kind of angelic purity. Thus the anthology is an attempt to resist any feminist narrative that does not respond to the anthologist’s version of feminism. Stanton draws her readers’ attention to the importance of considering the definition of feminism if there is any as well as her anthology’s attempt to select representative works across a long time period. The anthology in Stanton’s words is a “revision” and a discovery of the criteria of feminist poetry (xvii). The Defiant Muse is an “archeological’ work as Stanton describes it that defies as its title reflects stereotypical notions of femininity for the sake of deconstructing typical subject matter of feminist poetry. Stanton for example traces works that tackle motherhood, or the marriage relationship but reveal its silenced voice. Maternity or marriage is represented through works that condemn maternity and marriage as part of masculine dominance. A revolt against the religious and cultural institutions is also a clear trend in the anthology. The anthologist chooses more than one example to show that even language was one of the tools feminists used to fight their suppression. The selected texts celebrate feminists’ success in defying their oppressors.

“Canons: Literary Criteria/Power Criteria”(1988) by Hazard Adams quotes Gerald L. Burns when he explains that canons reveal power relations rather than literary ones (749). The concept of the canon is revealed and communicated through the political power criteria rather than literary criteria. Adams refers to Arnold Krupat’s article in the Critical Inquiry of September 1983 in which the latter defines the canon as: “like all cultural production, is never an innocent selection of the best that has been thought and said; rather it is institutionalization of those particular verbal artifacts that appear best to convey and sustain the dominant social order” (Krupat Qtd in Adams 749). Adams refers to a number of authors explaining and describing from different ideological perspectives the replacement of literary criteria by power ones He refers to Richard Ohmann’s questions regarding publication, distribution and reviewing related to the concept of the canon. This explains Ohmann’s discussion of aesthetic values emerging from social and class conflict (Adams 749). Barbra Herrnstein Smith on the other hand in Adam’s point of view gives an unusual perspective on the matter since she blows off any value or belief in aesthetic reference or standards. Smith argues that the whole idea of aesthetic value is no more than a totally personal choice of various parties ranging from the artists including the publishers reaching the audience themselves. The whole concept of aesthetic standards is therefore, a matter of subjective choices and interests (750).

Barbra Smith argues that it is necessary to notice that evaluations of literary works tend to ignore the idea that evaluations disregard the contexts, desires, necessities, practicalities and interests that produce the work and focus on the transcendental abstract evaluations (751). Adams explains that in order to solve the dilemma of power relations against aesthetic criteria, he borrows a word from W.B. Yeats’s “A Vision” (1937) which is the “antithetical”. Accordingly, the antithetical “describes” a stance that stands in opposition to power criteria/ relation as well as against aesthetic standards. It excludes anything that negates what does not belong to power criteria, or aesthetic criteria. The “antithetical” is a stand against all forms of power dualities: “the object over the subject, the universal (or general) over the particular, the “good” over the “evil” and in all cases vice versa” (Adams 1988). Adams poses an important as well as an intriguing question. He poses the question whether there could be “antithetical canons” or not. Antithetical canons, that would stand against power criteria or relations, which defeat the idea of the canon in the first place; since canons are historically the manifestation of power choices and criteria. Literary canons in this respect could be considered as the space that subverts the either/ or dichotomy of power exclusion and inclusion, or negation and acceptance. The antithetical in Adams’s point of view is a space that allows for opposition that neither depends on exclusion nor on inclusion to exist (754).

The antithetical would give voice to canons that recognize expression and representation neither of power relations, nor of aesthetic criteria. Adams refers to feminist canons in this context as a clear manifestation of power relations. In his point of view, feminist canons exist as a statement of power relations and not an antithetical representation. However, Adams draws attention to the dangers of accepting that antithetical stance. He refers to Foucault’s antithetical version that negates everything related to the self, the subject, the “I” and endangers in Adams’s point of view the object as well, or the object becomes unreasonably exaggerated.

Reading the anthology British Women Poets of the Romantic Era (1997) edited by Paula R. Feldman would be interesting if considered from Adams’s perspective of anthologies’ nature and function. It confirms the idea that some anthologies are statements of power that takes a particular stand, and in this case it is a feminist statement.   British Women Poets of the Romantic Era (1997) is a poetry anthology for British Victorian women. The anthology presents some of the works of British Victorian poetesses who have influenced the literary scene despite the challenging circumstances that have influenced women public recognition in that era. As Paula R. Feldman the editor of this anthology explains, poetry in the Victorian era was an essential part of the social life of the times as well as an important platform for all social concerns ranging from child birth, Thank you notes, and more important interests of the time. Feldman refers to the selected poems in the anthology as a sample that combines different voices of poetesses who are sometimes well recognized and some other times are not really known; works by poetesses from all walks of life. Women who are at the top of the social ladder such as Lady Caroline Ann and other works by women who belong to the lower classes such as Isabel Pagan the alehouse keeper or Janet Little the domestic servant (xxvi).

Feldman reveals that publication complexities in different contexts related to the female talent. She points out that because of social norms and concepts of women at the time many women did not publish their works and if they did, they denied their authorship to their works. Poetry as Feldman says was circulated through manuscript or through oral transmission. Women such as Jane Austen, Lady Byron or Dorothy Wordsworth, wrote poetry for their family and it was circulated through their closed circle of friends and family.   Aristocratic ladies such as Lady Ann Lindsay an Carolina Baroness Nairne denied any relationship to their works even when it was known that the work is their own (xxvi). According to Feldman the only cases when women acknowledged their works before the public was either that the work was done for charity as in Ann Candler’s case, or because women were forced to recognize their authorship because of their dire need for money such as Mary Robinson, Charlotte Smith or Felicia Hemans (xxvii).

Feldman attempts to unravel the common grounds as well as the disparities between those talented women. She uses biographical references as a tool that reveals links between those women’s shared experience. In Feldman’s analysis, most of those women had an educated parent who provided their access to reading and books. She also says that as children, most of those women were eager to learn and read extensively and even wanted to learn more than was acceptable for girls at the time. As youngsters they grew up in liberal households and they usually had patrons who helped them to develop their talents (xxviii). The anthology presents different and variant subjects and styles. However, Feldman comments on those women’s rich and wide experience represented in their poetry as a result of their informal education which ironically was considered by them as their drawback. She reports that those women thought that their lack of classical education was thought by them as their disadvantage.

The aim of this anthology as discussed by Feldman is not to group those women poets against their male counterparts, but rather investigate and understand the struggle that those women have gone through to make their poetic selves. This explains why the anthology includes different and various styles and subject matters. Those women do not share the same subject matter or the same style, but they share how they developed in a dominantly patriarchal society. It is also important as Feldman points out to notice how those women have subverted their society’s concept of the female writer to write about subjects and ideas such as war, politics and economics which are totally different from society’s expectations or allowed “feminine” subjects. Feldman traces the use of the bird and opium metaphors in the poetry of female poets. The significance of those metaphors is particularly of a feminine interest. Bird and opium metaphors and their freedom and release from pain connotations correspond logically to women struggle against patriarchal constraints. Opium as she argues is employed in the works of women poets as a symbol for changing consciousness that women strive to achieve in their worlds.

The range of subject matter, themes, and forms in the work of women poets is very wide. Different women poets have tackled many and various poetic forms and themes. Feldman says that some poetesses for example have tried their hands in almost all poetic forms and themes including comedy. Unlike expectations, women have written about comedy such as Jane Austen’s “On a Headache”, or Susanna Blamire’s “Stoklewath” and many other examples. It is also worthy of note that the traditional accepted accomplishments of women in the Nineteenth Century such as musical training have contributed to the development of song in women poets writings. Many songs became popular that were written by women poets and spread across England and Scotland. Feldman for example points out that the conversational language became part of the mainstream lyrics even before Coleridge and Wordsworth’s Lyrical Ballads (1798). However, despite all these achievements women poets remained absent from anthologies for a long time. Feldman argues that with the shift in taste and interests that happened with the coming of modernism, women poets were even cat to the shadows of oblivion and considered as “minor” poets. However, the situation changed as Feldman believes. Women studies in the late Twentieth Century and at present, the increase in the number of women academics as well as women in postgraduate programmes have helped in a revisionist approach. Feldman even aspires in her anthology of the British Women Poets to redefine, revise, and reevaluate the Romantic era. Therefore, she states that the aim of the anthology is to include as many women poets of the Romantic era, along with biographical material as well as many texts. She is against representative works that could end up with a canonical selection of a few (xxxii). The anthology triggers questions about the nature of the canon as well as even more important questions about the anthologist’s art. The canon remains a dubious platform as well as a manifesto. The formation of the canon out of petite narratives and promoting those petite narratives until they become cultural and national Grand narratives makes the anthology an intriguing manifestation of consensus as well as a defiant statement at the same time.

             Harris wonders about the range of definitions related to the Canon. He explains that there is a wide range of definitions for the canon ranging from the closed meaning of authorized biblical texts to authorized literary texts that reflect the variations of the different periods. Some canons as Harris points out depend on standard texts not because of any quality except that they present good morals or right thinking. Literary canons according to Harris can always be expanded and added to unlike biblical canons that are closed texts (111). Therefore, the analogy between the canon and “critical colloquy” is one that explains how literary canons are in constant movement, and how an ongoing selection and evaluation process works.

Cannons according to Alistair Fowler’s classification that Harris summarizes could be classified into different types. “The potential” canon is all written literature and what is still available of the oral tradition. The accessible canons represent only what could be available of the potential canon at given point time. The personal canon is the compiled reading lists, anthologies and selective texts or curriculum. The official canon is a mixture of all the other canons. The critical canons are the works that repeatedly appear in critical works. The different types and purposes for canons lead to the question of the relationship between canons and curricula. Harris explains that the Pedagogical canon is another type of canon created out of the space between the official and the critical canons. Questions remain about the place of some authors who are on all selection lists or those authors who are on the periphery. Where do these two groups of authors stand? Harris points out that the answer to that question is in the relationship between generations. What older generations transfer to younger generations, is given through selections that reflect their interests and tastes. This in turn affects the place of certain authors and texts in the “diachronic” canon or in the nonce canon; in other words, the place of the authors in the center or those in the periphery (112).

Canons and Curricula have common grounds. Harris reveals the links between canons as selections of certain texts and curricula as based as well on reading lists. However, reading lists in the British and American academia remained till the late nineteenth century mainly classical as Harris says (113). Harris refers to Alan’s C. Golding’s “History of American Poetry Anthologies” from 1793 till 1975 that analyzes the criteria of selection in anthologies. Criteria range from political and moral values to conserving a formal tradition in the mid-nineteenth century and the more recent focus on feminist, ethnic and political challenges that used to be on the margins and are recently more towards the center. Academic selections for example are determined to some degree by the length of the selection. Sometimes selection is based on what is available in print, or what interests others, or what others write about, which in turn appears to be determined by recognized and unrecognized rules or set of criteria that are mainly subjective. Academic selections lean more towards reductions and are determined sometimes by what the academics themselves have been taught or are familiar with (114). Thus the function of the canon is justified in the context of the academia. The canon provides a frame of reference for educational purposes. In other words, canons do not merely reflect the tension between aesthetics and power relations. It is oversimplifying to think that selections in anthologies are basically the outcomes of power games; they are rather a combination of many factors including Power influences as well as aesthetic ones.

Are anthologies still needed?

Addison Hibbard‘s A Word for Anthologies (1942) starts with identifying the argument against anthologies. He points out that the argument against anthologies focuses on three main issues: that they are mainly about what already exists in books, that they are controlled by financial issues and that they sacrifice true learning for quick learning (643). He then defends the function of anthologies through history. Anthologies for Hibbard cannot be replaced; otherwise there would be a real void. He makes an analogy between anthologies and magazines. Anthologies in his analogy resemble the selection process and choices magazines have to go through every day.   He differentiates between anthologies as a genre and the reputation it has developed through time. In his opinion, one should not discard the genre because of its negative reputation. Anthologies have had bad reputations because of the money issues so that anyone who can pay for the poet would get some of his/ her poems in their anthologies. Anthologists as Hibbard explains have the challenge of attempting to include the new that was not included before in previous anthologies. However, this is not the right approach in Hibbard’s opinion because he believes that “the best”; quoting Palgrave imposes itself over and over which explains why most anthologies have repeatedly common poems (645).

The qualities of good and bad anthologists are an important note that Hibbard makes in his article. He refers to the anthologists’ good critical sense, wide range of readings as well as selections that speak for the anthologists refined critical abilities. Hibbard blames anthologists who attempt to change or edit the works of poets included in their anthologies. The act of editing or changing the text is one of the bad qualities of an anthologist that is considered in Hibbard’s opinion one of the causes of the bad reputation of anthologies. Good anthologists according to Hibbard need clear purpose. The anthology has to have a clear purpose. Anthologies have some important useful functions if they are well edited and chosen. One of the important functions of anthologies is to hand down literature from one generation to another. This handing down process preserves literature from oblivion and saves the reader the trouble to search for specific works or authors by collecting these significant works in an anthology. The second most important function for anthologies is widening the readers’ horizons. Anthologies offer readers the opportunity to read multiple different poets or authors in one collection of works; they open the doors for the reader’ explorations of some works, literary ages, or specific literary genres (649). It is important to note in this context that anthologies are important for both the student and the general reader since they work on preserving literature and widening horizons.

Conclusion:

Whether good or bad, based on power statements or aesthetics, inclusion or exclusion, anthologies are still a unique genre and a manifestation of a literary interest.  Tradition and the Individual Poem (2001) by Ann Ferry triggers similar questions to those of Hibbard in terms of canons as the means to hand down to the next generation; Ferry points out: “While the same kind of question can be asked about every generation of poems and every generation of anthologies, the meanings of the questions themselves can change, as well as the responses to them, with shifting circumstances and situations” (3).

 It is really significant that questions about anthologies remain the same for the concept of the canon itself and the idea of narrativity as well. The important issue here is to trace and observe the change of the narrative from one generation to another or, from one period to another. The change of narratives reflects a shift in interests, tastes, aesthetics, and power positions. The analysis of the selected anthologies is an attempt for a close reading of the narratives of power and aesthetics. Either anthologies, canons or narratives, all are reflections and manipulations of literary ideologies as well as cultural, political and economic ones. Selection, definition, inclusion, and exclusion are always at play.