一道填空题求助，答案为B，请问C怎么不对？

1. Rubens, for all his high-flown rhetoric, churns out book reviews that have come to seem
_______________: from decades of eviscerating other’s prose, he now relies on a familiar and tired
formula.
(A) vitriolic
(B) perfunctory
(C) erudite
(D) mawkish
(E) draconian