Dislocating European Literature(s): What’s in an Anthology of European Literature?

• Main Author: César Domínguez
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MI-AN Publishing 2014-09-01
• Series: Kultura (Skopje)
• Subjects: Anthology, Canon, Education policy, European Higher Education Area, European Literature, European Union, Europeanization
• Online Access: http://journals.cultcenter.net/index.php/culture/article/view/97
• ISSN: 1857-7717; 1857-7725

The aim of this paper is to explore the (emergent) phenomenon of anthologies of European literature in relation to the process of Europeanization. The topic seems to be timely, for one of the results of the European Union’s education policies is a renewed interest in the meanings of “European literature” and how to teach it. For academia, anthologies represent both an important pedagogical tool and a key instrument for charting un/explored literary territories. My analysis is restricted to three case-studies: 1) the “European heritage” in US anthologies of world literature, 2) the forging of new ideas about European literature by way of anthologies which do not focus on “canonical” writers, and 3) private anthologies by model-writers. Anthologies are not conceived here as an aim in themselves—although new anthologies of European literature are certainly necessary—but as an opportunity to open up discussion about alternative pedagogical practices demanded by both the new context of the European Higher Education Area and the paradoxical but nonetheless fruitful relations between the European Union and Europe.