Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes

Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes
Philippe Lallemand · Public domain · source
Name	Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes
Other names	Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns
Period	Late 17th century
Place	Paris, France
Notable figures	Charles Perrault, Jean de La Fontaine, Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux, André Duchesne, Blaise Pascal, René Descartes, Jean Racine, Molière, Nicolas Malebranche

Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes was a late 17th-century intellectual controversy in France debating the relative merits of classical models versus contemporary innovation, influencing literature, arts, and science across Europe. The dispute involved writers, critics, academies, and patrons and intersected with debates in London, Rome, Leiden, and Amsterdam about tradition and progress, with echoes in later controversies such as those surrounding Immanuel Kant and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

Background and origins

The quarrel emerged amid cultural shifts following the Thirty Years' War, the consolidation of power under Louis XIV of France, and the rise of institutions like the Académie française, the Royal Society, and the Accademia dei Lincei, prompting debates over the authority of texts by Homer, Virgil, Ovid, Horace, Plato, Aristotle, Sophocles, Euripides, Thucydides, Herodotus versus achievements by contemporaries such as Galileo Galilei, Isaac Newton, René Descartes, Blaise Pascal, Pierre Corneille, Molière, Jean Racine, François de La Rochefoucauld. The expansion of printing in Venice, Antwerp, Paris and the circulation of periodicals like the Journal des sçavans enabled polemics between supporters of classical imitation and advocates of novelty, who cited authorities ranging from Dante Alighieri and Petrarch to moderns such as Miguel de Cervantes and William Shakespeare.

Key figures and positions

Pro-Ancients voices included critics and poets such as Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux, Jean Chapelain, Jean Racine and members of the Académie française, who appealed to models exemplified by Lucan, Seneca, Terence, Plautus, Pindar and commentators like Aelius Donatus. Pro-Moderns were championed by figures such as Charles Perrault, Jean de La Fontaine, André Duchesne, François Fénelon and patrons like Madame de Montespan and Madame de Sévigné who praised innovations by Pierre Corneille, Molière, Honoré d'Urfé, and foreign authors including Lope de Vega, Alessandro Manzoni, John Dryden and Ben Jonson. Philosophers and scientists such as René Descartes, Blaise Pascal, Nicolas Malebranche, Thomas Hobbes, Baruch Spinoza and members of the Royal Society influenced the modernist argument by invoking methodological renewal and empirical successes credited to Galileo Galilei and Isaac Newton.

Major debates and texts

Key pamphlets and works included Charles Perrault's set of "Parallèles" and his prefaces, countered by satirical verses from Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux and critical essays published in the Mercure galant and Journal des sçavans, while dramatists like Jean Racine and Pierre Corneille produced plays cited as exemplars by both camps; other influential texts included Michel de Montaigne's essays, Blaise Pascal's "Lettres provinciales", René Descartes's "Discourse on Method", and historical works by Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet and André Duchesne. The controversy overlapped with translations and commentaries on Homer, Virgil, Ovid, Horace, as well as editions of Plato and Aristotle, and extended into disputations over poetic rules derived from Aristotle's "Poetics" and Horace's "Ars Poetica", reprinted and debated by scholars in Leiden University, University of Oxford, University of Cambridge, and the University of Paris.

Impact on literature, arts, and science

Literary production responded with renewed emphasis on classical forms in the works of Jean Racine and Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux alongside experimental narratives by Charles Perrault and fabulists like Jean de La Fontaine who adapted sources from Aesop, Phaedrus, and Phaedrus (fabulist) traditions; painters such as Nicolas Poussin and Charles Le Brun invoked Poussinism versus Rubenism debates, linking to the legacies of Peter Paul Rubens, Titian, Giorgio Vasari, Michelangelo Buonarroti, and Raphael. In music, contrapuntal practices referenced models from Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina while innovators cited composers like Claudio Monteverdi and Jean-Baptiste Lully; scientific methodology and institutional authority were contested between advocates of Galileo Galilei and Issac Newton-style empiricism and defenders of scholastic traditions tracing to Galen and Ptolemy, with ramifications in debates involving Huygens and Robert Boyle.

Political and cultural consequences

The quarrel intersected with court politics under Louis XIV of France and patronage networks centered on Versailles, Madame de Maintenon, Cardinal Mazarin, and salons hosted by figures like Madame de Rambouillet and Madame Geoffrin; it affected censorship administered via the French Parlements and ecclesiastical authorities such as the Catholic Church and the Jesuits, and resonated in foreign courts of Charles II of England, Philip IV of Spain, Ferdinand III, Holy Roman Emperor, and Pietro Della Vigna. Colonial expansion and encounters with New Spain, New France, and British America fed modernist claims about novel knowledge from explorers, missionaries like Ferdinand Magellan and Samuel de Champlain, and traders linked to Dutch East India Company and English East India Company, while legal and educational reforms in institutions like Sorbonne and Collegio Romano reflected shifting attitudes toward authority and innovation.

Legacy and historiography

Scholars in later centuries, including Voltaire, Denis Diderot, Edward Gibbon, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Jacques Derrida, and Michel Foucault, interpreted the quarrel through Enlightenment and Romantic frameworks, connecting it to debates involving Immanuel Kant, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and John Stuart Mill about progress and historical judgment; modern historiography by Paul Hazard and Robert Darnton has reassessed archival pamphlets, salon correspondence, and academy records housed in the Bibliothèque nationale de France, British Library, and Vatican Apostolic Library. The dispute's themes reappear in comparative studies of neoclassicism and innovation in contexts including 19th-century France, Weimar Classicism, Romanticism, and twentieth-century debates over modernism and postmodernism, ensuring its continued relevance across fields represented by universities such as Université de Paris, University of Oxford, Harvard University, Yale University, Princeton University, and research centers like the École des hautes études en sciences sociales.

Category:17th century in literature