Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns
literary and artistic debate that started in the 17th century
The Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns (French: Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes) was a debate about literary and artistic merit that stirred the French literary and artistic world for most of the 17th century, and whose echoes continued throughout the 18th century. It started with a small number of debaters in the Académie Française, and grew to encompass most of the French educated community. This debate took its historical name from the publication, starting in 1688, of Charles Perrault's Parallèle des anciens et des modernes (Parallel of the Ancients and the Moderns), whose title provided the pretext for a play on words transforming "parallèle" into "querelle" (quarrel).
Origins of the debate
A central tenet of the European Renaissance was the study of culture and institutions 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 and interest in ancient texts was facilitated by the introduction of the printing press around 1440, which allowed classical concepts to spread quickly and spurred revolutions in intellectual, social, and scientific pursuits. For example, in the field of architectural theory, Filippo Brunelleschi revolutionized medieval architecture 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 classical ideals and the following changes in scientific and artistic perspective provoked reactions 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 in France 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.
Debate in France
The quarrel between the Classics and the Moderns opposed two distinct currents:
The Ancients (Anciens), led by Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux, felt that literary creation has its roots in the fair appreciation of the heritage of antiquity.
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Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q267863. The Library of Congress control number is sh85004867. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1688 and 1440.
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This entry incorporates text from “Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.