Description
Book SynopsisA theoretical, historical, and critical inquiry, this book looks at the assumptions anthologies are predicated on, how they are put together, the treatment of the poems in them, and the effects their presentations have on their readers.
Trade Review"Anne Ferry. . . . won a prize for
The Title to the Poem and deserves one for her new book,
Tradition and the Individual Poem: An Inquiry into Anthologies." -- Chronique
"It is. . . . literary criticism of a sensitive and sensible sort." -- Chronique
"A masterful combination of literary criticism and historical scholarship, Ferry's book constitutes essential reading for anyone interested in poems and literary history, specifically in how certain poems become literary history through the medium of anthologies."Harvard Review
"Ferry's book makes the admirable assertion that the anthology is a worthy and necessary object of critical attention, and her careful research yields rich materials for further study." * Modern Language Quarterly *
Table of Contents
Introduction: questions and premises; Part I. What Makes an Anthology: 1. Anthologies as a kind; 2. The disposition of the space; 3. The anthologist in the poem; Part II. What Makes an Anthology-Piece: 4. 'Echoing song': Elizabethan and seventeenth-century poems; 5. 'A darkling plain': public poems of 1770, 1867, 1955; 6. 'The poet of 'the fish'': the anthologizing of Elizabeth Bishop; Part III. What Poets Make of anthologies: 7. Poets as anthology readers; 8. Poets as anthology makers; Coda: T. S. Eliot's imaginary anthology; Notes; Indices.
