Is anything really new?
The ancient manuscript, discovered in a dusty corner of some forgotten library, has become a literary trope so familiar we hardly question it. Yet this device—the "found text"—has a fascinating history as a legitimizing strategy for new works.
Consider Geoffrey of Monmouth, the master of medieval myth-making. In his "Historia Regum Britanniae" (c.1136), Geoffrey claims his sweeping chronicle of British kings, including, most famously, King Arthur, came from "a certain very ancient book written in the British tongue" given to him by Walter, Archdeacon of Oxford. This mysterious manuscript, supposedly from Brittany (Armorica), conveniently provided Geoffrey with authority for his largely fictional account spanning two millennia of British history, from its Trojan foundations to the Anglo-Saxon conquest. Despite modern scholarship dismissing its historical accuracy, Geoffrey's work was accepted as factual history until the 16th century. The "ancient book" claim served as a brilliant shield against accusations of fabrication, allowing Geoffrey to present his Arthurian tales and other legends as recovered history rather than creative invention - as some of his contemporary critics argued.
A similar pattern emerges with Dante's Divine Comedy. According to Boccaccio's biography of Dante, after the poet's death, his sons searched desperately for what they believed were the missing final 13 cantos of "Paradiso". For eight months, these cantos remained lost, until Dante's son Jacopo reportedly had a dream in which his father's ghost revealed their location—hidden in a wall niche, covered in mould. The discovery narrative lends authenticity to these final cantos, which some speculate might have been completed by Dante's sons rather than the master himself.
The Renaissance elevated this practice to new heights. Humanist scholars built careers on discovering "lost" classical texts, with each new find fueling intellectual excitement across Europe. The recovery of works by Cicero, Lucretius, and others from monastery libraries transformed European thought. When Constantinople fell in 1453, Byzantine scholars fled to Italy with precious Greek manuscripts, further accelerating this textual resurrection.
What these narratives share is a paradoxical truth: innovation often requires the blessing of antiquity. New ideas gain traction when presented as rediscoveries rather than inventions. Geoffrey wasn't merely writing fiction; he was "translating" an ancient British history. The final cantos of Dante's masterpiece weren't completed after his death; they were "found" through divine intervention.
Perhaps we haven't changed so much. Even today, we cloak our most radical ideas in the language of tradition, seeking authority in what came before. The text, after all, is always found, never written. The root of the word ‘invention’, the most radical act of innovation, is the Latin verb invenire, to find, to come upon.
Is anything really new?