To be creative, Chinese philosophy teaches us to abandon ‘originality’
A very similar trend shows up in poetry fairly often across many cultures.<p>Adherence to a strict form, like a sonnet, breeds creativity because of the constraint.  (a little known fact is that e.e. cummings wrote more than a few very good ones)<p>Much earlier in time, scops and skalds -- the epic oral poets of anglo-saxon and norse cultures -- were renowned not so much for their ability to come up with new things as such, but by how cunningly they could weave together stock phrases and allusions to speak to the current moment.<p>Parallels to the midrashic traditions should be fairly obvious.<p>You see it in greek epic poetry too: the opening invocation of <i>The Odyssey</i> ends with "tell the old story / for our modern times".