The Quarrel between the Ancients and the Moderns | Eid A. Dahiyat (essay date 1983)
Eid A. Dahiyat (essay date 1983)
SOURCE: “Jonathan Swift's Battle of the Books: Its Background and Satire,” in Studia Anglica Posnaniensia, Vol. 16, 1983, pp. 265-72.
[In the following essay, Dahiyat summarizes the background of the Battle of the Books, primarily in England, and analyzes Swift's book within this context.]
The seventeenth century in England had witnessed a series of conflicting standpoints and attitudes in religion, politics and learning. In religion and politics the controversy reached a tragic summit, when the opposing parties took to arms to silence one another. In the field of learning, the controversy was not less vehement and emotional than the politico-religious one. It was, however, carried out peacefully except in “St. James's Library!”
To spotlight the very beginning of the Ancient-Modern controversy is not an easy thing to do for sure; perhaps impossible. But, for the sake of convenience,...
[The entire page is 3761 words long]
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