Ancients against Moderns
Regular price
€49.99
A01=Joan DeJean
Author_Joan DeJean
Category=DSB
Category=JBCC
Category=NHA
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
Product details
- ISBN 9780226141381
- Weight: 369g
- Dimensions: 15 x 23mm
- Publication Date: 15 Mar 1997
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
As the end of the 20th century approaches, many predict that it will mirror the 19th-century decline into decadence. The author of this text finds a closer analogy with the culture wars of France in the 1690s - the time of a battle of the books known as the Quarrel between the Ancients and Moderns. The book reassesses current culture wars from the perspective of that earlier fin de siecle, and re-reads the 17th century Quarrel from the vantage of 20th-century warring "ancients" and "moderns". In so doing, DeJean shows that a fin de siecle taking place in the shadow of culture wars can be more a source of constructive cultural revolution than of apocalyptic gloom and doom. Just as the first fin de siecle's battle of the books served as the spark which set off the Enlightenment, introducing radically new sexual and social politics which laid the groundwork for modernity, so current culture wars can result in radical, liberating changes, if we take an active stand against our own "ancients" who seek to stifle such reforms.
