Taxonomy of Anthologies According to the Criteria of Delimitation

Anthologies have usually been approached in relation to the canon and have usually been criticised for their inclusions and omissions. Yet anthology criticism ought to firstly acknowledge that the selection process stems from a concrete understanding of literature, tradition and its categories–period, genre, theme. These categories applied to the field of anthology-making are referred to as the criteria of delimitation, which condition which texts are apt to be anthologised. For this reason, Menand’s definition of tradition and its categories is set forth alongside Hopkins’s classification of anthologies in order to preserve the latter’s precise divisions–comprehensive, period, and trade anthologies–, to revise its terminology–genre anthology instead of generic anthology–, to demarcate the categories of the criteria of delimitation–critical anthologies are left out because they belong to the realm of the selection process–, and to propose a new class–the denomination of group anthologies for those collections which focus on the representativity of social groups. Thus, the criteria of delimitation, derived from the categories of tradition, offer a possible taxonomy of anthologies: comprehensive, period, genre, trade and group anthologies.