Bill, I doubt that anyone is going to disagree that even the greatest poets work with the language and culture they inherit, like everyone else. I wouldn’t use the word “conservative” for what they do with it, though. Your use of that word here levels it out to mean nothing in particular, since by those lights everyone is conservative, like everyone has a body and breathes the air and walks the earth that happens to be available. Your approach is one-size-fits-all. I agree with Richard that most of your last post is a series of truisms cited to support a “school of resentment” (in Bloom’s phrase) approach to great literature. Leveling things off can be so comforting. Ovid inventive? Nope, just a cipher. Dante or Shakespeare uncannily creative? Nah, they just “made good selections from the materials available to them.”
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