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  1. Oct 2019
    1. The task of art was to provide us with lively images of what we already knew. The present was for the most part a recycling of the past. It was its fidelity to the past that lent it legitimacy.

      So here Eagleton pushes further on the notion of why 18th/19th century might have valued tradition more than novelty in literature. It linked with powerful ideas about the role of literature (what it should do for us in a society) AND also had a relation to the roles of religion and science.