Myth of the Fall in Nineteenth-Century Literature

Why does the myth of the Fall continue to matter in an increasingly secularised world?
Why do we continue to imagine a point where everything went wrong, and why must we imagine that things were once better than they are now?

Modern political theodicies repeatedly play to the myth of the Fall as empowering human authorship, promising to ''take back control'' or ''make America great again''. The my...