John Dryden and the Battle of the Books

The Quarrel of the Ancients and Moderns lasted about 400 years. It began early in the 14th century when Dante and his circle celebrated the great philosophers and poets of antiquity but argued that, because the ancients had not been baptized into the True Church, even the wisest and most virtuous of...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inThe Huntington Library quarterly Vol. 63; no. 1/2; pp. 139 - 156
Main Author Gelber, Michael Werth
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published San Marino, Calif Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery 01.01.2000
University of Pennsylvania Press
Subjects
Antiquity
Apostolic letters
Classical literature
Classics (Literature)
Dryden, John (1631-1700)
Essays
Fables
Literary criticism
Literary history
Modern literature
Modernism
Philology
Poetry
Poets
Renaissance period
Satire
Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)
Tales
Verbal Communication
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Summary:The Quarrel of the Ancients and Moderns lasted about 400 years. It began early in the 14th century when Dante and his circle celebrated the great philosophers and poets of antiquity but argued that, because the ancients had not been baptized into the True Church, even the wisest and most virtuous of them could not be saved: they could not enter into the Christian heaven. Poet John Dryden was inevitably drawn into the debate--there were few if any intellectual currents of the day to which he did not in one way or another respond. Remaining fairly consistently a Modern, Dryden's views progress as not linear but cyclical, and in any case it had less impact on his late criticism on the Ancients than did his involvement in the last drawn-out engagement between the Ancients and the Moderns: the Battle of the Books.
ISSN:0018-7895
1544-399X
DOI:10.2307/3817867