Grendel

Literary historians, horrified it seems by the newness of the form, have commonly thought it necessary to provide the novel with a respectable antiquity, much as the genealogist fits out the parvenu with an impeccable family tree.… In their eagerness to supply the novel with a dignified ancestry they have behaved rather like a man who, setting out to write a history of the motorcar, should think it proper to begin by devoting a third of his space to the evolution of the oxcart. — Walter Allen (The English Novel)