Literature is indispensable for grasping a region’s cultural context

Evidence

Culture and literature, in other words, are not necessarily coterminous with linguistic formation and state boundary, especially in historical epochs preceding the emergence of the bourgeois nation-state and, in countries like India, even after the emergence of such a state; the rise of print capitalism is a variable but by no means an invariable determinant. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 487 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Reading world literature well requires defamiliarizing readers from their own culture — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 397; National consciousness forms through language and literature, not only through shared ancestry; True philology makes a hospitable place in the mind for the foreign Other (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Literature and culture are not coterminous with language and state boundaries #complicates (0.76) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 487