Споры Древних и Новых: Литературно-художественный диспут XVII века.

Literary and artistic debate that started in the 17th century

The Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns was a debate about literary and artistic merit, which expanded from the original debaters to the members of the Académie Française and the French literary community in the 17th century.

It was an essential feature of the European Renaissance to study the culture and institutions inherited from classical (Greek and Roman) antiquity. In contrast to the medieval scholastic emphasis on Christian theology and unchanging monarchy, Renaissance humanists launched a movement to recover, interpret, and assimilate the language, literature, learning and values of ancient Greece and Rome. The 15th century rediscovery of ancient texts and their wide distribution after the introduction, in about 1440, of the printing press into Europe, allowed a faster propagation of culture and ideas; and the resurgence of learning based on classical sources brought revolutions in many intellectual and social scientific pursuits. For example, in the field of architectural theory, Filippo Brunelleschi revolutionized medieval architecture using the knowledge he rediscovered after studying the remains of ancient classical buildings, analyzing the works of 1st century BC writer Vitruvius, and understanding the mathematical principles that could be discerned from them. This cultural rebirth of the classical ideals of ancient times, and the following changes in scientific and artistic thought, gave rise to a reaction from those who perceived it as a danger to the stability of Christian civilization and wished to reassert the social and political values of medieval modernity. The debate became known as a "quarrel," after the frequently made pun on Charles Perrault's title Parallèle des Anciens et des Modernes (Parallel between Ancients and Moderns, 1688–92); the word querelle being used in the place of parallèle.

In the end, the Quarrel of the Ancients and Moderns was a cover, often a witty one, for opposing views of much deeper significance. One side was attached to the classic ideals of Greece and Rome and rejected a theory of art that turned literature into propaganda for the ruling powers, while the other contested the very idea of intellectual or aesthetic values above the authority of the King and the Church. The renewal of interest in antiquity during the Age of Enlightenment led to a reassessment of the achievements of the classical past, and ended up subjecting the Scriptures themselves to the scrutiny of critical thinkers. The attack on authority in politics and religion had analogues in the rise of scientific inquiry, and the challenge to royal and ecclesiastical authority in the literary field already announced the questioning of state and society at the time of the French Revolution, when absolute monarchy and state sanctioned religion—the emblems of modernity—would be overthrown in the name of the ancient ideas of republic, democracy, and freedom of religion.