Exploring early American literature anthologies

This essay introduces a new digital tool, Exploring Anthologies of Early American Literature, and uses it to examine logics of inclusion and exclusion from 1979 to the present day. In tracking the different editions of the Norton and Heath anthologies of American literature, the tool becomes particularly adept at identifying diachronic and nonce canons—texts that appear to identify an inner core over time and those that circulate at its edges. In our essay, we also note that while racial and ethnic diversity have generally expanded, that expansion has come in spurts and in some ways stalled. Moreover, geographic diversity has remained static, or even shrunk. Finally, the essay considers how the presentation of material in anthologies shapes interpretation. The anthology—as a form, as a genre—seems to reinforce historicist approaches to early American literature, and recent selections of texts suggest that the field has moved even further toward emphasizing such historicist methods. Ultimately, we hope to advance a discussion about anthologies and the texts they make most readily available for teaching early American literature.