Literary judgments require historical knowledge to separate the personal from the representative

Evidence

But is it possible to give a judgment, of the type given in the Manual, without knowing precisely these elements? How, in their absence, can one distinguish what is strictly personal to Goethe from what is representative of an age and of a social group? Judgments of this type are justified only to the extent that they are not empty generalities containing in themselves the most disparate things but are precise, proven and decisive. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1665

Categorization

• XREF: Gramsci’s method here — grounding judgment in concrete history to separate individual from social-group expression — anticipates his own warning about what bad criticism of the Other produces; connects forward to how he’ll critique Orientalist scholarship. — connects to: Literary style flaws reflect their authors’ historical moment, not merely personal failure. — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 98
• SEED: Angle: ‘Empty generality as malpractice’ — how vague judgments in criticism and in discourse about other cultures function as a refusal to do the historical work.