The Quarrel between the Ancients and the Moderns | Narelle L. Shaw (essay date 1988)
Narelle L. Shaw (essay date 1988)
SOURCE: “Ancients and Moderns in Defoe's Consolidator,” in SEL: Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 Vol. 28, No. 3, Summer 1988, pp. 391-400.
[In the essay below, Shaw interprets Daniel Defoe's Consolidator as a part of the Battle of the Books, judging it “Defoe's first extended contribution to the battle of the ancients and moderns.”]
The Consolidator has long been recognized as an allegory pertaining to political events during the period 1660-1705—in particular, to the problems posed by the Spanish succession, and the High Church's move to tack an important land bill onto a bill designed to prevent the occasional conformity of dissenters.1 Less apparent is the fact that the Consolidator represents a substantial contribution on Defoe's part to the ancients-moderns controversy, the only indication of this dimension of the Consolidator being...
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