Ancients Against Moderns: Culture Wars and the Making of a Fin de Siecle (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780226141381)

As the end of the century approaches, many predict our fin de si鐵le 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 si鐵le (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 si鐵le 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 si鐵le'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.

Author: Joan Dejean
ISBN-10: 0226141381
ISBN-13: 9780226141381
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Language: English
Published: 03/15/1997
Pages: 236
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.72lbs
Size: 9.01h x 6.05w x 0.59d

Review Citation(s):
New York Times 04/27/1997 pg. 28