The article tells about what an anthology is, what it happens, and in particular, the anthologies of poetry and computer games are understood.
Art
In our century, the abundance of printed materials is difficult to imagine that even some 150 years ago, the vast majority of people who inhabited the planet were illiterate. This problem is still relevant today: there are still many backward and underdeveloped countries in the world that pay very little attention to the education of their inhabitants.
Writing has existed as such for several millennia, but almost always it has remained a kind of privilege, the lot of the elect, who could afford to spend time and money learning to read themselves or their children. By the way, in Europe there were even illiterate kings, which was considered absolutely normal, and all they knew how to do was sign on official documents.
Gradually, everything changed, and people realized the importance of literature, books and the ability to read them. But mass literacy was progressing very sluggishly, since, for example, in Russia for a long time there were only parish schools, and compulsory primary education appeared at the beginning of the 20th century.
An anthology is ...
But fortunately, now everything is different, and in most countries compulsory primary or secondary education has been introduced. All this led to a sharp increase in the number of writers and books, which previously again were very rare. The Internet is especially helpful in this - it has helped many young authors print on paper. But for convenience and to reduce confusion at all times, literary works were tried to be combined in an anthology. What it is? This we will understand.
Definition
An anthology is a collection of various literary works of one or more authors. In both cases, they are related by a common theme, genre or some other factors due to which it became possible to combine works under one cover or a series of books.
This word came to us from the ancient Greek language and literally means “collection, collection of flowers, flower garden”.
To put it simply, an anthology is a book, poem or literary work of a different kind, which, for convenience and simplicity, is much more profitable to place in one book or a series of them. There can be many reasons for this. For example, they do this with all the works of a famous author or publish a collection of short stories by authors of various but united by a single meaning, universe of action or theme. Or create a series of books that include collections of detective stories of all the writers who made a name for themselves in this genre.
This is done mainly because of convenience, but in our time an additional role is played by additional profit. Since a person, having seen a beautifully designed collected works of his beloved author, will surely buy it, even if he has the works individually. So in the modern world, anthology is also an additional source of income for publishers.
Poetry
The first anthologies of the poetic kind in Russia began to be published at the beginning of the 19th century, which is not without reason called the century of poets and writers. The names of only the most famous authors and those who are in the school curriculum have survived to this day, but there were many more. So the anthology of Russian poetry in those days was very popular, however, as now. An additional reason for this was the fact that prose (novels or short stories) then only gained popularity.
Now such anthologies are published in a rich and beautiful design, and under their covers the creations of both an individual writer, for example, Lermontov, and all the most popular at that time are combined.
Other
Surely the word "anthology" is familiar to almost every child or teenager. And the point is not that in our time, children love reading so much, although this also exists. Just at the beginning of the general computerization and widespread distribution of computer games, their anthologies became very popular. True, they are found less and less, and their heyday fell on the beginning and the middle of the 2000s, when there were few people on the Internet, and people were still actively buying ordinary laser discs containing games. Their anthology, of course, was pirated, but this did not stop anyone.
As in the case of literature, the games were also united together on some specific basis. Because a fan of “shooters” is unlikely to be interested in a collection where other genres are mixed. Sometimes in an anthology all parts of one game were combined or simply very similar in genre. Despite the low quality and frequent “buggy”, the games were still popular, since they cost significantly less licensed publications, and contained almost a dozen games at once, unlike one or two licensed ones.
Conclusion
So we figured out what an anthology is. As we see, this word can be applied not only in relation to literature. Sometimes you can even find an anthology of computer programs.