Randall Anderson, Lawrence University

Randall Anderson has earned graduate degrees from the University of North Carolina/Chapel Hill, Oxford University, and Yale University, and is currently Assistant Professor of English at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin. Apart from particular classroom interests in Renaissance drama and c16th poetry, his primary research interests involve theoretical and historical bibliography (he is, for instance, currently pursuing an analysis of the paratextual features of early modern printed books). An abstract of his dissertation follows:

My dissertation explores both Elizabethan and modern collections of sixteenth-century verse as indices of taste, and looks through the lens of historical bibliography at the various aesthetic, sociological, and political forces which have defined the shape of Renaissance poetry for different generations of readers. I divide my investigation into two parts, the first of which focuses on the evidence from two simultaneously evolving types of sixteenth-century literary and cultural productions -- manuscript and print miscellanies -- to deduce (as much from their points of divergence as from their points of congruence) Tudor habits of and motives for reading, appraising, and collecting verse. I reconstruct the types of choices made by printers (based on the contents of surviving commonplace books) alongside the choices made by an individual whose private manuscript collection exists both to confirm and to advertise (given its almost inevitable circulation) its keeper’s taste. An important component of this first part is an extensive historical survey and theoretical consideration of the nature of the anthology. I establish the distinction between a miscellany and an anthology, and employ the two terms to highlight the difference between a reader-driven canon (necessarily the consideration of the miscellany’s printer, given his economic risk) and the editor-driven canon (in the form of the modern anthology, which has to balance idiosyncrasy against the supposed obligation to be representative). Part two of this dissertation looks at the role of the antiquary in rescuing and preserving -- often without discrimination -- sixteenth-century literature, and then explores in detail the evolution of "The Renaissance" as it has been distilled and packaged by anthologists of this century.

Randall.L.Anderson@lawrence.edu

321 Main Hall
Lawrence University
Appleton, Wisconsin 54912
office phone: (414) 832 6699
fax: (414) 832 6944

This page last updated June 5, 1997 / HTML by Rita Raley