http://chronicle.com/article/What-We-Lose-if-We-Lose-the/150991/
On the other hand, once the present began to seem divorced from the past, modern writers felt they knew more than had their ancestors, and to distinguish themselves from both the ancients and their own contemporaries, they had to write works unbeholden to previous efforts. In Edward Young’s Conjectures on Original Composition (1759), we find the notion that “the first ancients had no merit in being originals; they could not be imitators. Modern writers have a choice to make and therefore have a merit in their power.”
Recent Comments