Periodization

Periodization—the process of dividing and categorizing the past into distinct blocks of time—can be an extremely useful, even necessary, analytical rubric, as it provides a way of distinguishing a period of time and the literature produced during that period from those both before and after. However, periodization is never a neutral process, something that is especially true when considering how (and if) women’s writing fits into traditional period divides (such as “Renaissance” or “Restoration”). Putting critical pressure on the connections and disconnections between women’s writing and the traditional frameworks of historical temporality that tend to govern much literary scholarship and the institutional structures within which it is studied and taught can open up new understandings about the place of women’s textual production within literary history writ large.