Traditional literary histories reduce texts to examples and force crude causalities upon them

Evidence

One understands, obviously, what he meant by both features of the passage just quoted: the vacuousness of the narratives of manuals of literary history, which are constitutively unable to confront the texts themselves except as examples; and the crude causalities of the history of ideas, which sometimes reach their formulation in psychoanalysis (something for which he had a lifelong aversion), or else (less frequently) their generalization in the form of vulgar sociology. — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 490

Categorization

• XREF: Relevant to distinguishing what counts as legitimate periodization from the crude causalities Jameson is criticizing. — connects to: Popularized classics lose the estrangement that constituted their truth. — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 301; Literary history is constructed by arbitrarily isolating one element as the diachronic thread — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 648; Indian literary historiography fails through idealist and Brahminical premises — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 1089 (+5 more)
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Popularized classics lose the estrangement that constituted their truth. — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 301; Literary history is constructed by arbitrarily isolating one element as the diachronic thread — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 648; Indian literary historiography fails through idealist and Brahminical premises — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 1089 (+5 more)