Oxford 1st Year English Coursework. Distinction

4. `[E]very hundred years or so , it is desirable that some critic shall appear to review the past or our literature , and set the poets and the poems in a new order. This task is not one of revolution but of readjustment [...] Dryden, Johnson and Arnold have each performed the task as well as human frailty will allow` (T.S. ELIOT).

Why and how is the literary canon adjusted?

Anthologies are milestones in the process of canonization. Their attempts to chart, classify and popularize poetry are the result of the poetic reevaluation T.S. Eliot encourages. Yet, whilst Eliot`s quotation recognizes the `human frailty` and subjectivity involved in canon formation, he still envisions one universal canon which is sporadically readjusted. This attempt to define a solitary shared canon is simply not consistent with why or how a multiplicity of canons are readjusted and created through anthologies. They are the product of a long process of gathering, analyzing and choosing governed by a particular, often singular, editor. Eliot attempts to vindicate this subjectivity from any claims of personal prejudice such as those implied by Harold Bloom`s Anxiety of Influence. Bloom argues that each writer is plagued by a fear `that nothing new remains to be written` and consequently engages in an Oedipal struggle with his poetic forbearers. In contrast, Eliot negates the definition of `revolution`, which hints at a personal overthrow of power, in favour of the more neutral re-adjustment. However, the subjectivity of anthology editors, and their canonical influence, provide a means to challenge this claim. Howard Sergeant, the poet and editor of Britain`s oldest poetry magazine Outposts (Feb 1944-), is one such example. His huge influence upon the charting of modern poetry was effected through the nearly sixty anthologies he edited. His works, such as An Anthology of Contemporary Northern Poetry, were written for school use and served not only to establish a sense of independent culture and identity but to spread it through learning environments. In doing so, they fostered distinctive regional and national canons of literature by constructing and disseminating their own particular cultural generalization. This conception of the canon as a cultural mediator is mirrored in its etymological roots. It originates from the Greek "?????", meaning `measuring stick` and functions as a critical framework of shifting societal values which it must constantly adapt to. What emerges is a difficult dialectic between the anthology`s canonizing function, as a record of cultural change, and the expression of subjective editorial literary beliefs and practices. Indeed, Sergeant`s personal choices still project a simplified `universal` context which reduces what Palumbo-Liu refers to as the `local` situation of the work of literature. By this he means his particular daily experience, including interaction with local traditions and idioms, not simply broader societal concerns. However, a periodised anthology, such as those implied in Eliot`s quotation, will deliberately select what the editor considers representative of significant writing from that era. John Guillory expands upon this simplification in his comment that `the problem of the canon is the problem of syllabus and curriculum`. Indeed, anthologies are collections of poetry widely used in pedagogical learning environments as a means of accessing an historical sweep of poetry. They are designed to represent a distillation of a particular culture and its writing and are taught as such; yet they are necessarily exclusive due to the editorial process of selection and rejection. As a result, these canons are intimately bound up in their own contemporary society and must constantly reflect its changes in their choices. However, in the critical framework within anthologies the importance of the personal editor in canonization is revealed. The individual positioning and portrayal of texts serves to socially situate them in a discourse with their neighbourly texts and explanatory criticism. This is precisely the editorial autonomy that W.B. Yeats claims in his construction of The Oxford Book of Modern Verse. In his introduction, he justified his choices and alterations saying `my work gave me that privilege`. Indeed, the critic John Sparrow pinpointed the true nature of this anthology in his statement `even those who find fault with the choice of poems ... must accept this book with gratitude for what it is: The judgment of one who is, for many, the greatest poet`. Rather than openly denounce the work, he proposes a redefinition of the Oxford Anthology as a personal selection, not an authoritative collation. Despite this, Earl R. Anderson accurately highlights the critical tendency, or preferment, for the creation of a `totality of observers`, rather than the autonomy of an `ideal observer`. This endeavours to create a union between method and subject. It desires the multiplicity of the societal culture under scrutiny to be matched by an equally diverse and manifold appreciation of it. For example, `Other writers await our attention and inclusion in the canon` (John F. Crossen); `Postcolonial poetry has much to teach us` (Jahan Ramazani). The plural pronouns and verbs imply that canon formation is a group effort, yet the subjectivity of W.B. Yeats`s editing undermines this and reveals how it is often enacted through a single editor with their own critical framework. It is not just the selection of poems that the author deliberates, but their portrayal and formatting. Due to their exclusive nature, anthologies typify poets by creating popular selections of their work. They serve as poetic dictionaries by providing snapshots of work as fully representative of that particular writer. As a result, W.B. Yeats`s tempering of Oscar Wilde`s Ballad of Reading Gaol by removing sixty-six stanzas, leaving only forty, serves to manipulate the anthology`s construction of the poet as whole. Yeats states he has `plucked from the Ballad of Reading Gaol its foreign feathers`, yet what he leaves behind are, in fact, sections that correspond to his own earlier writing in Countess Kathleen and Various legends and lyrics (1892). This is particularly true of the emotionally charged colour palate of lines such as `scarlet coat` , `black despair` and `red hell`. These mimic his own descri ptions of `the blue star of twilight` and `red-rose bordered hem`, which again imbue the pictorial with instinctive emotion. This personal selection is an application of his own criticism in The Symbolism of Poetry where he claimed all colours `call down among us certain disembodied powers, whose footsteps over our hearts we call emotion`. In this case, Yeats has enacted precisely the editorial exploitation that Eliot attempts to shy away from. His personal opinions are not simply passive `human frailty` but rather active participants in why he seeks to readjust the canonical of Oxford Collection. It is exactly this critical intervention that Graff and Di Leo reject in an `exchange` entitled `Anthologies, literary theory and the teaching of literature`. They argue that explanatory material `short circuits` entry into a critical discourse community by reducing criticism to its smallest building blocks in `informational headnotes and footnotes`. The result of this is simplification, the removal of any mediation in criticism, and what Di Leo terms the `cookie cutter approach`. In this, students `apply literary theory "A" to literary text "B"` and instantly achieve `a valid interpretation of literary text "B"`. Graff and Di Leo lament this form of mechanical, prescribed hermeneutics as it fosters homogenous reading communities without any originality of thought. In this respect, individual editorial choices in anthologies can guide the criticism of a wide community of readers. A footnote or a preface in an anthology can manipulate the process of canonization, yet the editor`s motivation in placing it there is not so disinterested as T.S Eliot suggests. Rather, as Yeats demonstrates, the role of editor becomes a means of expressing and vindicating personal critical opinions. The result of such individuality, and subsequent biases, is that a variety of canons are formed by as many anthologies to reflect the personal opinions of their editors. Nevertheless, Neohistoricist critics such as Regenia Gagniers still pre-suppose the unity of the singular objective canon in critical denunciations such as `the literary canon as an elite cultural capital will probably cease to exist`. Although educational syllabuses have allowed some canons to become more widely accepted, they are still only a single (albeit extended) reading community among limitless others. W.H. Auden highlighted this in his popular edition of The Oxford Book of Light Verse. His anthology was later somewhat disowned from the institution in its 1974 reissuing as `W.H. Auden`s Oxford book of light Verse`. This familial estrangement served to disassociate Auden from his editorial forbearers and deny continuity between them. Even in its inception it charted a new path through English literature by including no poem in The Oxford Book of English Verse and featuring epigrams and songs sung by soldiers, criminals and tramps. Such a venture was a bold reaction against the tradition of Quiller-Couch who selected `the best` of English literature, distinct from the author`s individual context and instead postulated a shared national identity. In contrast, Auden argued that light verse can only be written when the writer feels totally at ease with his own immediate audience and social context. He places this as a reason for light verse`s association and dismissal with `vers de societe, triolets, smokeroom limericks` as often it is only in the trivial that the author is not self-conscious and `acutely aware of his method of expression`. In doing so, Auden created a singular canon distinct from Quiller-Couch`s Oxford Anthology, in which authors existed, not as mounted heads to be reservedly admired, but as active figures interwoven with their own social context. His re-conceptualizing of light verse marks the creation of a subversively low-brow canon which questions what qualifies as literature. Auden did not adopt, as Yeats had done, the role of rewriting of the works of others and even resisted any attempted alterations and censorship by the Oxford press. However, like Yeats his method of selection and edition was rooted in his own criticism and, as such, whilst he sought to foster a reading community distinct from other Oxford collections, its origins were similarly subjective. His clear application and justification of his own criticism, in subverting existing literary tradition, stresses the autonomic nature of canon formation and adjustment. Anthologies are by nature synecdochal. They distil entire authors and swathes of history into a few select works, chosen through the subjective lens of the editor. In recording canon development and foundation they also measure their own contemporary society and its cultural beliefs. In addition, their own frequent existence in pedagogical learning environments allows them to spread these cultural generalizations and foster reading communities that perpetuate canons. What emerges from this is not one single unified canon, but a multiplicity of conflicting literary charts. However, the draftsmen are far from objective. Auden and Yeats both make use of editorship in order to justify their own poetic and critical practice. The careful construction of their respective anthologies allows them to propagate personal critical frameworks and interpretations which encourage mechanical hermeneutics. However, with the increasing proliferation of anthologies, ranging from X.J Kennedy`s Tygers of Wrath: Poems of Hate, Anger and Invectice to Emergency Kit: Poems for Strange Times by Jo Shapcott, Sir Francis Palgrave`s comment that `Anthologies, are sickly things` is becoming more accurate. The increasing dissection and foundation of new reading communities, through an ever widening range of anthologies, is creating a canonical cacophony far beyond Eliot`s conception of a singular construction.

Bibliography: Primary Texts: Auden, W.H., The Oxford book of Light Verse (Oxford University Press, 1938) Kennedy, X. J., Tygers of Wrath: Poems of Hate, Anger and Invectice (University of Georgia Press, 1981) Shapcott, J., Emergency Kit: Poems for Strange Times (Faber and Faber, 2004) Yeats, W.B., The Oxford Book of Modern Verse (Oxford University Press, 1978) Sergeant, H., An Anthology of Contemporary Northern Poetry (Harrap, 1947) Secondary Texts: Anderson, E.R., `Defending the Canon`, PMLA, 2001, Vol.116,no. 5, pp.1442-3 Bloom, H., Anxiety of Influence, (Oxford University Press, 1997) Gagnier, R., `Looking Backward, Looking Forward: MLA Members Speak`, PMLA Special Millennium Issue, 2000, n.115, p.2038 Graff, G. and J. R. Di Leo, `Anthologies, Literary Theory, and the Teaching of Literature: An Exchange`, Symploke, 200, Vol. 8, no.1-2, pp. 113-128 Guillory, J., `Canon`, in Critical Terms for Literary Study, ed. by Frank Lentricchia and Thomas McLaughlin (University of Chicago Press, 1990), pp. 233-249 Mendelson, E., `Light and Outrageous` ,New York Review of Books, 2004, vol. 51, no.13, pp.1-6 Oxford English Dictionary, Online: http://www.oed.com/, (Accessed 20/04/2014) Palgrave, F. P., The Golden Treasury, ed. Christopher Ricks (Penguin, 1991) Palumbo-Liu, D., `Teaching the Canon`, World Policy Journal, 2010, Vol. 27, no.3, pp. 11-14