The debates around the periodisation of the history of literature have constituted a recurrent concern among historians of literature and literary critics alike. The controversy has revolved around the acknowledgement of certain periods as such, the denomination of the same, the criteria employed to establish them, the positive or negative connotations that have been traditionally attributed to them, the inclusion or exclusion of specific authors as representatives of certain periods, and the tensions in terms of power relations of different kinds (linguistic, national, ethnic, of gender and race) upon which the phenomenon of periodisation itself is sustained.  
