Duke University literary scholar Fredric R. Jameson has accepted the $640,000 (4.5 million kroner) Holberg International Memorial Prize at a ceremony in Norway.

The 74-year-old professor was selected for the honor for his theories putting culture into a social and historical context. The ceremony was held Wednesday in the southwestern Norwegian city of Bergen.

Jameson was selected for the honor in September, when the University of Bergen awards committee said he "has done more for the contextual study of culture than any other living scholar."

His work helps show how modern culture, such as literature, painting, cinema, and architecture, reflects social and economic developments of their time, the committee said.

The award citation pointed out his 1991 book "Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism" as a key contribution.

It says that work defines the periods of culture from the early 19th century onward as realism, modernism, and postmodernism, and shows how they correspond to three major phases in modern capitalism: classical capitalism, imperialist capitalism and global or late capitalism.

Jameson is a literature researcher and Marxist political theorist. He taught at Harvard, Yale, and the University of California before going to Duke in 1985.

The Holberg prize was created in 2003 by Norway's government to honor work in the humanities, social sciences, law and theology. It was named in memory of Norwegian playwright and author Ludvig Holberg, who lived from 1684 to 1754. Last year's prize went to American legal scholar Ronald Dworkin.