État présent

The Quarrel of the Ancients and Moderns, or to use its French name, la querelle des Anciens et des Modernes,1 has been the subject of sustained interest in the past couple of decades since the publication of Joan DeJean’s important work, Ancients against Moderns: Culture Wars and the Making of a Fin de Siècle, which will be the starting point of this état présent.2 The Quarrel ‘proper’ refers to two historical moments in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries which witnessed an intense debate between ‘Ancients’, who argued for the unparalleled superiority of ancient culture, and ‘Moderns’, who advocated progress and the supremacy of national culture. The first instance occurred in 1687 with the confrontation of Charles Perrault, the Modern, and Nicolas Boileau, the Ancient, after Perrault read out his controversial poem ‘Le Siècle de Louis le Grand’ at the Académie française. Many other...

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