Entertainment / Literature / Periodization: The division of literature into chronological categories of historical period or time as opposed to the categorization of literature according to genre, i.e., categories based on conventional features shared between works of similar type. For instance, if I were organizing my bookshelf, and I placed all the books from the early 1800s on one shelf, and all the books written in the Victorian period on the next shelf, and all the twentieth-century books on the last shelf, I have organized my literature by periodization. If, however, I placed all the books containing tragic drama together on one shelf, ands placed all my Western novels on another shelf, and put all the poetry collections on the last shelf, I have organized my books according to genre. (Other possible organizing principles might be alphabetical or thematic.) Periodization is not always clear. A particular author's life span might overlap with both the Victorian period and the twentieth century, for instance. Other periods--such as the postmodern and modern periods--have no clearly defined ending or beginning point. Still, the intellectual exercise can be useful for thinking about how particular literary artists fit (or don't fit) into an era and for thinking about the zeitgeist or 'spirit-of-the-age' in which they live.
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