The Extra 101
Generations. Some of these young scholars are confessed traditionalists; many are openly building upon the work of their teachers; and all of them are committed to presenting not just their own insights but those of peers and predecessors. Still, they will present these from within a distinctive generational experience; and that experience (of discontinuity, disruption, dissensus) requires its distinctive form of expression. Which brings me to the second step in our process. In considering a format for the History, no obvious precedent came to mind. The omnium-gatherum seemed as inappropriate for our purposes as did the alternative model of the single-author history, and for much the same reasons. The eclectic mode of the old Cambridge History assumes comprehensiveness and objectivity. The cyclical design of the Spiller History expresses a single-minded attempt at synthesis.
Any contemporary effort, to recall Professor Elliott’s apt reference to Bakhtin, should be history in the dialogic mode. History as narrative, dialogic narrative as literary history. That concept may help explain our decision to restrict the number of contributors. Lacking the authority for synthesis, we felt we should encourage flexibility and reciprocity. Lacking faith in sheer plentitude, we felt it necessary to allow fuller scope both for personal vision and for active collaboration, not only within each volume, but across volumes. In short, we wanted neither a host of piece-work specialists to fill out a putative grand design, nor representatives of a host of eclectic constituencies to satisfy some putative statistical norm. Perhaps the right term for the approach we sought is integrative, in the sense of narrative integration, and with the qualifications I just mentioned. Integrative, as distinct from either eclectic or synthetic: personal voices, responsive to different voices, but allowed ample development in their own right; continuities and contrasts between eras, emerging neither by chance nor by editorial fiat, but through substantive interchange between contributors. Clearly, the success of this precarious combination of latitude and mutuality would depend on the size of the group. We needed an Aristotelian mean between the hubris of Parrington’s one and the anonymity of Spiller’s fifty-five “et al.” We settled on twenty-two contributors, for five volumes of about six hundred pages each.