Literary periodization must rest on culture-wide material shifts, not chronology

Evidence

A literature exists as a theoretical object to the extent that its productions can be examined in relation to their objective determinations by the development of the culture as a whole, so that periodization comes to rest on shifts more fundamental than mere breaks in chronology and is able to account for the dominance of the major generic forms, their uneven developments in terms of period and region, as well as the material conditions for the subordination of other generic forms in the course of historical development. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 487

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The literary image is a situational, historicizing phenomenon, not a timeless structure. — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 756; Shifting from a lost golden age to a future reconciliation fundamentally reorders literary history. — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 369; A grounded Indian literary history must trace material dialectics of unity and difference — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 1164 (+1 more)

Related

• A grounded Indian literary history must trace material dialectics of unity and difference (similarity 0.85)
• The literary image is a situational, historicizing phenomenon, not a timeless structure. (similarity 0.83)
• A materialist dialectical history of Indian literature has barely begun (similarity 0.82)
• Dialectical analysis begins by isolating key factors from the historical continuum (similarity 0.82)
• Shifting from a lost golden age to a future reconciliation fundamentally reorders literary history. (similarity 0.81)
• Literary history is constructed by arbitrarily isolating one element as the diachronic thread (similarity 0.81)
• Only a materialist-comparatist frame can break the colonial grip on Indian English Studies. (similarity 0.80)
• Only materialist historiography reconnects canonized texts to their production conditions. (similarity 0.80)
• Postcolonial theory lacks a systematic periodization of its own practices. (similarity 0.79)
• Literature and culture are not coterminous with language and state boundaries (similarity 0.79)
• Postcolonial literary theory obscures the political and economic materialities determining it (similarity 0.79)
• Indian literary historiography fails through idealist and Brahminical premises (similarity 0.79)
• Culture need not align with language and state boundaries (similarity 0.79)
• English literature has shaped the very categories of modern Indian thought (similarity 0.79)
• Urdu’s six-century prose delay shows literary form follows material social conditions (similarity 0.79)