BookRix

In an address to the American Society for Eighteenth Century Studies at

the 1983 annual meeting, Roger Lonsdale suggested that our knowledge of

eighteenth-century poetry has depended heavily on what our anthologies

have decided to print. For the most part modern anthologies have, in

turn, drawn on collections put together at the end of the eighteenth

century and the beginning of the next, when the ideal for inclusion was

essentially that of “polite taste.” The obscene, the feminine, and the

political were by general cultural agreement usually omitted. Lonsdale

is not the only scholar questioning the basis of the canon; indeed,

revisionism is fast becoming one of the more ingenious--and

useful--parlor games among academics. Modern readers are no longer so

squeamish about obscenity nor so uncomfortable with the purely personal

lyric as were the editors at the end of the eighteenth century. And we

are hardly likely to find poetry written by women objectionable on that

score alone. In short, the anthologies we depend upon are out of date.