Early modern people legitimized innovation by disguising it as the retrieval of ancient virtue.

Evidence

If you wanted to do something new, you were as well to present it as something old. — Hilary Mantel, A Memoir of My Former Self- A Life in…, 812

Categorization

• XREF: XREF: Connects to Mantel’s historical novels and her method of inhabiting a worldview where the past is normative rather than primitive. — connects to: Nations claim antique dynasties to disguise their modern provenance. — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on…, 397
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Hilary Mantel, A Memoir of My Former Self- A Life in…, 812