국민국가를 넘어서 또는 국민국가 사이에서

Beyond National Literary History or Between National Literary Histories?: The Politics of Canon and Anthology in English Literature

This paper aims to clarify the issues surrounding the ‘Englishness’ of English literature. The authors believe that the problems can only be evaded, if not exacerbated, by disingenuously shifting the definitional focus of English literature from territoriality to language. Redefining English literature as literature written in English cannot properly address the problem of anthologizing and canonizing. Instead, the very conceptual category of English literature, as embodied in canons and anthologies, needs to be destabilized and decentralized. An easy and irresponsible way out of trouble would be to categorize, for example, Oliver Goldsmith or Walter Scott as “British” writers. The problem is that “British” is not a proper term for identifying writers such as Chinua Achebe (Nigeria), Brian Friel (Ireland), Derek Walcott (The West Indies), all of whom appear in The Norton Anthology of English Literature, the most popular and influential compendium of English literature. What has been taking place in anthology production and literary history writing is a widespread tendency to classify literary works along national lines. The nation-state as an epistemological base sits uneasily with the apparent globalization of English literature as literature written in English. This paper thus aims to locate and articulate the site of tension that exists between the nation-state based literary history and the ever-extending canonizing and anthologizing in that troubled category called English literature.