Style as self-foregrounding language is a modern historical category, not a universal one

Evidence

We may put all this in another way by pointing out that works come into being at varying distances from the verbal, and that to say that a work is made of words is not the same as saying that “style” in the modern sense is one of its dominant categories. In much of the novelistic production of the nineteenth century, for instance, style is a relatively less significant element (think of the way in which we secretly modernize Dickens, for example, by thinking of him as a stylist), while the stylistic dimension of a writer such as Racine is inconsequential when compared to the rhetorical one. To define style, however, as language which deliberately calls attention to itself, and “foregrounds” itself as a key element in the work, is to reassert, as over against stylistics, the profoundly historical nature of the phenomenon. — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 680

Categorization

• XREF: The Dickens remark connects to the broader argument that we project modern stylistic categories backward; resonates with Adorno’s suspicion of the cult of style. — connects to: Style as a dominant category is historically contingent, not universal in literature; Style is a historically-graspable mark of deliberate making, not mere decoration; Postmodern architecture resists organization around individual authorial styles and names — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 262 (+1 more)
• SHARE: Copy this to a literary-theory contact who works on periodization: the Dickens-as-stylist point is a compact example of modernizing anachronism in canon formation.

Broader Connections

• Style is a historically-graspable mark of deliberate making, not mere decoration #responds-to (0.78)
• Postmodern architecture resists organization around individual authorial styles and names #exemplifies (0.75) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 262
• Self-presentation fails when small stylistic details betray an intended identity #exemplifies (0.75) — Lyn H. Lofland, World of Strangers_ Order and Action in…, 618