Prologue

Summary

Literary history gives voice even as it inevitably silences. Voicing and silencing are determined by the very processes of literary history itself. Or rather, voicing and silencing in literary history are conditioned by historiography. As is the case of any other scientific inquiry, archeology being perhaps the best example, the writing of literary history inevitably changes the object it purports to present “objectively.” Since by its very nature literary history involves canon making, the writing of literary history implies exclusion even as it aims to include. A perfunctory survey of literary histories and anthologies produced roughly during the last hundred years gives a fascinating account of the oscillations of poetic relevance and cultural preeminence in the period: which poets are included and how many of their poems are quoted or discussed; which poems from which collections are mentioned or anthologized; which poems never collected in book form continue to be culled from the wealth of little magazines that circulated in the period; how the literary scene changes, when unpublished material is suddently unearthed and a new poet discovered. One might also consider in this regard which poets have been most taught and dealt with in academic dissertations at different times and in different schools; which poets crop up more frequently in theoretical discussions of the lyric, and which poets make it into the common discourse of daily life. It may be, as Harold Bloom has argued, that only “strong” poets last and that poets themselves are mainly responsible for canon formation. Nonetheless, we need to ask which poets go on being potently rewritten by younger poets of different persuasions.