Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns

Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns

The quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns (French: querelle des Anciens et des Modernes) was a literary and artistic debate that heated up in the early 1690s and shook the Académie française.

Contents

Description

On one side of the debate were the Ancients (Anciens), led by Boileau, who supported the merits of the ancient writers and contended that a writer could do no better than imitate the great examples that had been fixed for all time. On the other side were the Moderns (Modernes), who opened fire first with Perrault's '"Le siècle de Louis le Grand"' ("The Century of Louis the Great," 1687), in which he supported the merits of the authors of the century of Louis XIV and expressed the Moderns' stance in a nutshell:

La docte Antiquité dans toute sa durée
A l'égal de nos jours ne fut point éclairée.

Learned Antiquity, through all its extent,
Was never enlightened to equal our times.[1]

Fontenelle quickly followed with his Digression sur les anciens et les modernes (1688), in which he took the Modern side, pressing the argument that modern scholarship allowed modern man to surpass the ancients in knowledge.

In the opening years of the next century Marivaux was to show himself truly a Modern in establishing quite a new genre of theatre, unknown to the Ancients, of sentimental comedy (comédie larmoyante) in which the impending tragedy was resolved at the end, amid reconciliations and floods of tears.

By constraining his choice of subjects to those drawn from the literature of Antiquity, Jean Racine showed himself as much one of the Ancients, as his restriction of his tragedies to the classical unities derived by the classicists from Aristotle's Poetics: the unities of place, time, and action (one scene location, 24 hours, and consistent actions respectively).

The Quarrel of the Ancients and Moderns was a cover, often a witty one, for deeper opposed views. The very idea of Progress was under attack on the one side, and Authority on the other. The new antiquarian interests led to critical reassessment of the products of Antiquity that would eventually bring Scripture itself under the magnifying glass of some Moderns. The attack on authority in literary criticism had analogues in the rise of scientific inquiry, and the Moderns' challenge to authority in literature foreshadowed and later extension of challenging inquiry in systems of politics as well as religion.

In contemporary Britain, the quarrel was taken less seriously. Sir William Temple argued against the Modern position in his essay "On Ancient and Modern Learning" (where he incidentally repeated the commonplace, originally from Bernard of Chartres, that we see more only because we are dwarves standing on the shoulders of giants). Temple's essay prompted a small flurry of responses. Among others, two men who took the side opposing Temple were classicist and editor Richard Bentley and critic William Wotton.

The entire discussion in England was over by 1696, and yet it seems to have[original research?] fired Jonathan Swift's imagination. Swift saw in the opposing camps of Ancients and Moderns a shorthand of two general ways of looking at the world, that he developed in his satire A Tale of a Tub, composed between 1694 and 1697 and published in 1704 with the famous prolegomena The Battle of the Books, long after the initial salvos were over in France. Swift's controversial and polarizing satire provided a framework for other satirists in his circle of the Scriblerians, and the Moderns against the Ancients is employed as one distinction between political and cultural forces.

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Perrault's poem was published in 1687 in François de Callières's Histoire poetique de la guerre nouvellement declarée entre les anciens et les modernes ("Poetic history of the war recently declared between the ancients and the moderns"), which was not itself strictly partisan of one side or the other..

References

  • Joan DeJean, Ancients against Moderns: Culture Wars and the Making of a Fin de Siecle, Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 1997, ISBN 9780226141381.
  • Joseph M. Levine, The Battle of the Books: History and Literature in the Augustan Age, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991.
  • Levent Yılmaz, Le temps moderne : Variations sur les Anciens et les contemporains, Paris: Editions Gallimard, 2004.

External links


Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

Игры ⚽ Нужна курсовая?

Look at other dictionaries:

  • Ancients and Moderns — ▪ literary dispute       subject of a celebrated literary dispute that raged in France and England in the 17th century. The “Ancients” maintained that Classical literature of Greece and Rome offered the only models for literary excellence; the… …   Universalium

  • The Battle of the Books — is the name of a short satire written by Jonathan Swift and published as part of the prolegomena to his A Tale of a Tub in 1704. It depicts a literal battle between books in the King s Library (housed in St. James s Palace at the time of the… …   Wikipedia

  • Science and mathematics from the Renaissance to Descartes — George Molland Early in the nineteenth century John Playfair wrote for the Encyclopaedia Britannica a long article entitled ‘Dissertation; exhibiting a General View of the Progress of Mathematics and Physical Science, since the Revival of Letters …   History of philosophy

  • Pierre Le Gros the Younger — Pierre Le Gros (Paris, 12 April 1666 Rome, 3 May 1719) was a French sculptor, active almost exclusively in Baroque Rome. Nowadays, his name is commonly written Legros, while he himself always signed as Le Gros; he is frequently referred to either …   Wikipedia

  • Modern era — The term modern period or modern era (sometimes also modern times) is the period of history that followed the Middle Ages between c. 1350 and 1500. It is further divided into an early period of development called the early modern period, which… …   Wikipedia

  • 1697 in literature — The year 1697 in literature involved some significant events.Events* George Farquhar arrives in London from Dublin. * Thomas Corneille publishes his translation of Ovid s Metamorphoses into the French language. * Daniel Defoe s An Essay Upon… …   Wikipedia

  • A Tale of a Tub — was the first major work written by Jonathan Swift, composed between 1694 and 1697 and published in 1704. It is arguably his most difficult satire, and perhaps his most masterly. The Tale is a prose parody which is divided into sections of… …   Wikipedia

  • French literature — Introduction       the body of written works in the French language produced within the geographic and political boundaries of France. The French language was one of the five major Romance languages to develop from Vulgar Latin as a result of the …   Universalium

  • Charles Perrault — Portrait (detail) by Philippe Lallemand, 1672 Born 12 January 1628(1628 01 12) Paris, France1 Died 16 May 1703(1703 05 16 …   Wikipedia

  • Modern history — Modern and Modern Age redirect here. For other uses, see Modern (disambiguation) and Modern Age (disambiguation). Human history This box: view · talk · …   Wikipedia

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”