THE QUARREL OF ANCIENTS AND MODERNS (1674-1704)

A dispute that raged in France and England in the 17th century between those who maintained that the classics were the only models for literary excellence and those who challengged the supremacy of the clasical writers.


The quarrel had its origins in the rise of modern science, which tempted some French intellectuals to ssume that, if Descartes had surpassed ancient science, it might be possible to surpass other ancient arts.


The first attacks on the ancient came from Cartesian circles in defense of some heroic poems by Desmarets de Saint-Sorlin that were based on Christian rather than classical mythology. The dispute broke into a storm with the publication of Nicolas Boileau´s L`Art poetique (1674), defining the case for the ancients and upholding the classical traditions of poetry. From then on the quarrel became personal and vehement. Among the chief supporters of the moderns were Charles Perrault and Bernard de Fontenelle. Supporters of the ancients were La Fontaine and La Bruyère.


In England the quarrel continued until well into the first decade of the 18th century. Whether the quarrel was actually carried to England from France is uncertain because the vigorous leadership of the Royal Society inn advocating the new science and philosophy seemed to make the dispute inevitable. In 1690 Sir William Temple´s charges in his Reflections upon Ancient and Modern Learning (1694). It praised the moderns in most but not all branches of learning, conceding the superiority of the ancient in poetry, art, and oratory. The primary points of contetion were then quickly clouded and confused, but literature progressed from antiquity to the present as science did, and whether, if there was progress, it was linear or cyclical. These matters were seriously and vehemently discussed. Jonathan Swift, defending his patron Temple, satirized the conflict in his Tale of a Tub (1704) and, more importantly, in The Battle of the Books (1704). At a later date Swift was to make an even more devasting attack on the Royal Society in Gulliver´s Travels, Book III, "The Voyage to Laputa".


The dispute was not resolved an its day and has been obviated by the modern view that art is not progressive (as much validity Altamira Cave as the paintings in the Sistine Chapel)... But the quarrel had the overall effect of weakening the position of classicism and preparing the ground for Romanticism.