Unfortunately, a lot of what was turned out in 19th Century Art and Literature WAS banal, maudlin, and pettily sentimental.
The modernists threw out the baby with the bathwater.
The traditionalists want to keep everything, resulting in epidemic waves of intelectual diabetes.
Like any subject revolving around taste and quality, what is needed is a great deal of discrimination.
Both traditionalists and modernists are guilty of judging primarily by a works "school" rather than it's inate quality.
Art, music and books have to be judged individually on their merits, not as members of some "school" or "movement" and thus automatically to be praised or desparaged.
So9