Foreword

by Zhu Jisong

This anthology is based on the textbook and notes of Professor Lu Gusun’s “Contemporary British and American Essays：Selected Readings for Seniors Majoring in English,”a canonical Fudan University undergraduate course that he took over from his poet-advisor, Professor Y．M．Hsü (1906-86), and has been teaching for more than twenty years．I took the course eight years ago, got four credits, and then audited it twice, as I felt sure that revisits would enhance my understanding of the literary texts and, speaking broadly, of human life, past and present, as is reflected in them．Even today, a faculty member myself, I will occasionally sit in his classroom as a “back-bencher,”a native returned from the Wasteland of pomo-babble to the Wonderland of sense and sensibility．That he sometimes cracks the same joke for the same topic adds to my secret amusement.

Meanwhile, this peppy polymath, now an early septuagenarian, manages to perform a textual aggiornamento of the reading list for the course on a semestral basis, missing neither Noam Chomsky’s peacenik interpretation of the September 11 terrorist attacks nor Barack Obama’s post-racial Philadelphia speech, “A More Perfect Union,”the prelude to the first non-white presidency of the United States．In his own words, Professor Lu finds “a new tide to swim with,”as he wants himself and his students to boot to “stay afloat.”Yet it is no accident, I am afraid, that his two decades’ worth of striking arms in a troubled sea of worldwide words charts a mapping, though not intended to encompass the marine multitudinousness, of the latest century-long rising and receding of a genre that Montaigne named, in his serene château life, Essai．In this sense, the present volume, an annotated anthology, eloquently bespeaks Professor Lu’s art and craft of pedagogy and scholarship.

Etymologically, anthology, a word of Greek origin, is the gathering of flowers．Of flowers, we expect petals, styles, stigmas, and, above all, fragrance．What do we want, then, from an anthology, one of essays in our case, apart from selection, random or with sagacious system, of personal, peculiar writings by divers authors, to the pleasant scent of which the anthologist is allured？

Present-day China, a nation firmly in the grip of English fever, has witnessed a boom of anthologies of English essays．Most of them, however, prove to be loose motleys that, despite their claims about preserving the essence of Englishness, fail to show any insight into the heart and mind of the English-speaking peoples．To me, a non-native speaker of the tongue, such anthologies are but “an vnweeded Garden/That growes to Seed”(Hamlet I, ii) in which even an otherwise red, red rose will wither, owing to lack of cultivation and watering by the hand of the gardener．What’s wrong？Bacon, Johnson, Lamb, Hazlitt, Thackeray, and Thoreau—aren’t their names a warranty of intense delight？Most obviously, the problem lies with the anthologist, who used to be looked upon, to quote the formidable C．S．Chien, as “one who makes the good things in literature accessible to many and thus spreads aesthetic joy in the widest commonality.”Indeed, it must not be forgotten that an essay, argues Christopher Morley, is more a mood than a form, a mood in which someone feels impelled to share, in an artfully natural fashion, something touching her- or himself to the quick in real life and that traditionally, it has been the role of the anthologist, as if an avatar of the essayist, to transport readers into the mood．Since in this Age of Information, the Internet has theoretically brought about, once and for all, the universal accessibility to and commonality of literary gems, the anthologist, with her or his communicational burden thus removed, is supposed to concentrate on infecting readers with “aesthetic joy,”or in Virginia Woolf ’s introspective description, on shutting them in, not out of, the curtain of esoteric ecstasy that a genuine masterpiece draws around．This shutting-in, this infection, is the atman of any essay anthology worth its salt.

Whereas some anthology-smiths may be living a life of sedentary ease and doing brisk scissors-and-paste work on their laptop, Professor Lu, with the assistance of his disciples, Ms．Ding Jun, Miss Zhang Nan, and, last and least, Yours Humbly, has taken strenuous, sometimes hair-splitting, pains to teach the pieces first and then anthologize them, endeavoring to convey to the Chinese who love English for English’s own sake the sweet, soul-stirring smell of the “flowers”that he has handpicked for them．By doing so, he is actually doing literary criticism in the Bloomish sense, which is primarily appreciation and fuses analysis and evaluation (Bloom viii).

Most of the twenty essays included here, half of British authorship and half American, were written in the previous century and are of the “familiar”type.^* It needs to be further pointed out that although the anthologist famously believes in elitism, some lesser authors, such as James Herriot, Gilbert Norwood, and David Owen, have also found their way into this book, attesting to a soft spot for the plebeian and practical．Ten are provided with annotations of philological, historical, or philosophical nature that, in the electronic proofs for me, fill the margin to the full and often spill out of the page frame, so that readers are well (not over, hopefully) equipped for embarking on a learned odyssey with Professor Lu as their Mentor．To the other ten is left far more space for a hunt for opulent breath to be undertaken largely by readers themselves.

Lo and behold, here come the essays！

“Are they unusual？”

“Do they set you thinking？”

“Do they make you recall things you have seen or read？”

“Do they urge you to find more in your surroundings, and read more, and try to express yourself more clearly and more interestingly？”

John M．Avent raises these questions in the introduction to his Book of Modern Essays (xiii)．When you find yourself pondering them as you turn over the pages that follow, you will agree with me, I bet, that this tiny anthology—a word of caution—is aromatically contagious.

References

Avent, John M．Introd．The Book of Modern Essays．Ed．Avent.1924．Whitefish, MT：Kessinger, 2005．Print.

Bloom, Harold．Preface．Essayists and Prophets．By Bloom．Philadelphia：Chelsea, 2005．Print.

Chevalier, Tracy, ed．Encyclopedia of the Essay．London：Dearborn, 1997．Print.

Chien, C．S．Foreword．Selected Modern English Essays for College Students．Ed．Y．M．Hsü, D．Z．Zia, and T．W．Chou.1947．Shanghai：Fudan UP, 2007．Print.

Morley, Christopher．Preface．Modern Essays．Ed．Morley．New York：Harcourt, 1921．Bartleby.com：Great Books Online．Bartleby.com, 2000．Web.6 Mar.2010.

* For a definition of “familiar essay,”see Chevalier 578-81.