The Extra 619
Critical imagination. If it can achieve these goals, I believe it can deepen our awareness of the tensions and contradictions in the culture in which our literature and our literary histories participate and which they express.
One of the most difficult practical problems we face in this undertaking- the limitation of space- is only the tip of a much larger issue which will trouble us throughout- the problem of the canon. To put the matter squarely, how do we decide what proportion- literally how many pages- of the book can be devoted to each author, each work, each movement, each region, each genre, each aspect of historical context? Scholarship of the last two decades has rediscovered many fine writers previously excluded from the literary canon for various reasons, including forms of prejudice. As we include discussions of writers previously ignored or slighted, we must try to strike a reasonable balance of treatments that will broaden the canon yet not undervalue writers of longstanding reputation. In most sections there will be essays by prominent critics that will be devoted to women writers and to minority writers. I hope that these essays will not appear to bracket such writers as anomalous but will serve to cut across traditional demarcations and disrupt or disturb old divisions.
Related closely to these matters of inclusion and exclusion is the question of geographical region, especially the South. Many authors who have become identified as regional writers, and many critics who have studied and written about their works feel that they have always been treated at “the other” in American literary history, as outsiders who are not treated with the same seriousness as writers born in the Northeast. Faulkner is seen as the exception that proves the rule, while Poe has simply been abducted and held captive. Experience has proven that subtleties of regional association are lost completely. Therefore, we will treat certain writers and groups of writers within essays focusing upon regional literatures. At the same time, there is nothing to prevent a writer from appearing in other essays in different contexts. Sarah Orne Jewett and Kate Chopin will receive important discussion in an essay on Women Writers in the late nineteenth century and in the piece on Realism and Regionalism. Cross-referencing and indexing will play an important role in this history and will in itself remind the reader of the complexity and variety of the literature.