Abstract

Anthologies are often inherently problematical entities. They commonly suffer from two debilitating deficiencies: unevenness in the quality of the contributions and the lack of a common theoretical framework. As far as the latter difficulty is concerned, rarely will perspectival diversity sufficiently compenstate for the concomitant dearth of any conceptual harmony. The result is often — sadly — a discrete congeries of individual essays, some meaningful, others less so, without a unifying raison d'etre. All of which usually justifies the habitual practice of skipping about, randomly choosing this or that more or less interesting piece, ignoring the bulk. In an era in which “information” mindlessly proliferates