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| | Benedict: Making the Modern Reader - Introduction: THE VARIOUS FEAST |
 | | This class of literature begets loose, desultory habits of reading, and the idea that the study of a given subject is the height of monotony. |
| | [¶46.] Although literature is written, compiled, produced, and read by individuals whose decisions affect the popularity and influence of particular authors and works, this book argues that taste--including their taste--is the result of market forces, and that the history of the anthology, the very genre that publishes literary consensus, definitively proves this. |
| | Here I argue that anthologies, commonplace books, courtesy literature, and English reference and writing manuals from the late Renaissance to the eighteenth century serve as models for the anthology not only by their presentational techniques but also by promoting native literature as the means for social mastery and by encouraging participation in literary culture. |
| www.pupress.princeton.edu /books/benedict/introduction.html (11433 words) |
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