The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms, a book of terms, what’s so special about that? After our class discussion on The Bedford, I realized how complex the organization really is when you look closely at it. On one had, the organization is simple and straightforward- it’s alphabetical. When flipping through The Bedford and looking at the connection between entries, it made me realize how abecedarian organization facilitates speed when looking a word up. On the other hand, the organization was much more complex when my group began looking closely at definitions in the glossary and how they connected to other definitions. When looking up a word in The Bedford, the definition would sometimes contain another definition that was bolded- another word that needed to be looked up in the book. This started a vicious cycle of cycling, or circulating, through The Bedford. When trying to find one definition, it lead to a long process of flipping pages to several different entries and by the end, I forgot what word I was originally looking up. The process of looking up a word in The Bedford proved to be a very circular process, which connects well with our discussion of Cane, Meridian, and Zulus in class. I found this contradictory combination in The Bedford unexpected and interesting.
In chapter 4 of Interdisciplinarity, Moran discusses the influence of Marxism on literature. On page 123, Moran states that “Marxism stresses the interconnectedness of ideas and material forms.” This relates to what I had to say about The Bedford because this is exactly what the glossary did: it connected ideas which resulted in a circular process of finding definitions. This raises the point, is The Bedford’s organization focused more on connecting ideas or making it easier for the reader to find a particular definition? The abecedarian organization argues for the latter, but the interconnectedness of the definitions to other defining argues for the former. All-in-all, The Bedford is one complicated glossary.