Recent studies of medieval English literature have queried anew the role of the anthology (medieval and modern) in shaping both historical and current notions of vernacular canons. Here, my examination of two major assemblies exemplifies the theoretical, interpretive, and pedagogical problems raised by this recent work. In British Library manuscript Harley 2253, an early-fourteenth-century collection, and in Sammelbände of printed books put together in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, I discern sequences of texts that take as their theme the idea of the anthology: the languages of poetic expression, the technologies of public literacy, and the cultural values that generate canons. Studying and teaching medieval literature requires us to restore texts to such early compilatory contexts; but it also requires us to reflect on our contemporary fascination with anthologies and with the de-authorizing of the literary in the wake of postmodern theory—a move, I suggest, anticipated in medieval literary culture.
