Literature and Criteria

Can one develop the proper criteria to properly judge any literary work from any time period? Or does one need to develop different criteria for different works from different periods? In other words, can a work only be judged by the context of its time? I think that in order to define "literature" we must include some type of criteria. We need criteria to determine what is or is not literature, and then criteria to determine how good or bad the literature is. However, I personally cannot think of any way to create a criteria that would be able to properly judge literary works throughout the ages and the world. That would seem to suggest that you would have to continually create and change all literary criteria. And yet, that still doesn't seem to be the most logical approach to this problem. So, how do we develop the right criteria for literature? Any suggestions?