Ancients against Moderns: Culture Wars and the Making of a Fin de Siècle

by Joan DeJean

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.

Genres: France, History, Nonfiction

236 pages, Paperback

First published February 15, 1997

About the author

Joan DeJean has been Trustee Professor at the University of Pennsylvania since 1988. She previously taught at Yale and at Princeton. She is the author of eleven books on French literature, history, and material culture of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, including most recently How Paris Became Paris: The Invention of the Modern City (2014); The Age of Comfort: When Paris Discovered Casual--and the Modern Home Began (2009); The Essence of Style: How the French Invented High Fashion, Fine Food, Chic Cafés, Style, Sophistication, and Glamour (2005). She lives in Philadelphia and, when in Paris, around the corner from the house where, in 1612, this story began.

Reviews

[Beth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Despite its subtitle, this book doesn’t focus on the period of history that we usually think of as fin-de-siècle France. Instead, the author draws a comparison between 1690s France and 1990s America, showing their similar struggles with “culture wars” - particularly in the literary realm. We see the opposing camps lining up: one adhering to a traditional canon and seeing change in literature as leading to the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it, and the other camp pushing the boundaries into more and more modern arenas.

But the part I found fascinating about this book wasn’t as much its comparison between two eras of fin-de-siècle culture wars, but instead its portrayal of the literary upheaval in France during the late 17th century. Why did I never know that most of the significant French writers of this period were women? Or that a certain newspaper publication caused such a public sensation by asking its readership to write in and express opinions on new books (a privilege formerly reserved for scholars and clerics only), that the term “public opinion” was born? Or that proponents of Homeric epics as the height of achievement in literature considered the new genre (later to be known as the novel) to be poisonous and degenerative to society at large?

This intriguing look at a little known point in history is very readable for its type, and well worth the effort.

*****

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