Guy Davenport, in his literary scholarship, is the model I should should should have found when I was wrestling with the dissertation-daemon.
This was a mere aside in the essay, but what a rich paragraph, yes?
Please seek out Guy Davenport's scholarship and his translations (not his fiction, I say), and you will be rewarded by living, breathing, sharing erudition, especially regarding Modernism in Art and Literature, the Classical/Primitive, and archetypal aspects of how literature works as well, no matter the period.
Oh, and he's just a great practical and generous-minded reader of texts.
I have that quotation--and others worthy of attention, posted on a wall in my garage. When I am working, or working out, out there, I often reread such words, such a paragraph, with renewed enjoyment and even wonder.