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As the end of the century approaches, many predict our fin de siècle will mirror the nineteenth-century decline into decadence. But a better model for the 1990s is to be found, according to Joan DeJean, in the culture wars of France in the 1690s—the time of a battle of the books known as the Quarrel between the Ancients and the Moderns.
DeJean brilliantly reassesses our current culture wars from the perspective of that earlier fin de siècle (the first to think of itself as such), and rereads the seventeenth-century Quarrel from the vantage of our own warring "ancients" and "moderns." In so doing, DeJean shows that a fin de siècle 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 siècle's battle of the books served as the spark that set off the Enlightenment, introducing radically new sexual and social politics that laid the groundwork for modernity, so can our current culture wars result in radical, liberating changes—if we take an active stand against our own "ancients" who seek to stifle such reforms.
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In a bold and broad swipe, Joan DeJean's book Ancients Against Moderns attempts to draw out the parallels between the cultural debates that wracked France in the late 17th century and the contemporary arguments over virtue, values, taste, and tradition that now divide the United States. DeJean is a knowledgeable guide to the intricacies of the "Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes," focusing particularly on how the debate unfolded in the French Academy between Charles Perrault, an advocate of the Moderns, and Nicholas Boileau, the protector of staid, classical tradition. In describing this debate, DeJean also succeeds in tracing the development of new concepts and meanings, such as the notion of a public audience for literature and an alteration in the language of sentiment and emotion in French letters.
About the Author:
She also makes clear just how much was at stake in what may now seem a rarefied disagreement. In reality, matters of moral relativism, the mutability of political forms, and possibilities of social and scientific progress and discovery all hung in the balance. The author's attempts to draw parallels between the past and present debate about cultural change would have been strengthened if the book was not so centered on Gallic examples. Nonetheless, DeJean's book is a stimulating work that succeeds in making clear that ideas matter and history can repeat.
Joan DeJean, author of seven previous books on French literature, history, and culture during the reign of Louis XIV, is Trustee Professor of French at the University of Pennsylvania, where she has taught for the past fifteen years. She has also held positions at both Princeton and Yale. Bicultural, she shuttles regularly between her homes in Philadelphia and Paris, with her finger on the pulse of both venues.
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- PublisherUniversity of Chicago Press
- Publication date1997
- ISBN 10 0226141381
- ISBN 13 9780226141381
- BindingPaperback
- Number of pages236
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