Ancients against moderns : culture wars and the making of a fin de siècle

Resource Information

The work Ancients against moderns : culture wars and the making of a fin de siècle represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in University of Missouri-St. Louis Libraries. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

Label

Ancients against moderns : culture wars and the making of a fin de siècle

Title remainder

culture wars and the making of a fin de siècle

Statement of responsibility

Joan DeJean

Creator

• DeJean, Joan E

Subject

• Social change -- United States -- History -- 20th century
• History
• France -- Intellectual life -- 17th century
• Social change -- France -- History -- 17th century
• Culture conflict
• United States -- Intellectual life -- 20th century
• Ancients and moderns, Quarrel of

Genre

• History

Language

eng

Summary

"As the end of the century approaches, many predict our fin de siecle 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 siecle (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 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 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." http://catdir.loc.gov/catdir/description/uchi051/96019011.html

Cataloging source

DLC

Dewey number

303.4

Illustrations

illustrations

Index

index present

LC call number

DC128

LC item number

.D45 1997

Literary form

non fiction

Nature of contents

bibliography