Between the Ancients & the Moderns

"The quarrel between the ancients and the moderns was an old dispute when it was resumed with special ferocity in the later seventeenth century as writers and artists, their friends and patrons, debated how far to risk the freedom to innovate. In this book Joseph M. Levine argues that it was this tension that gave unity to the cultural life of the period and helped define its baroque character. He also asserts that, contrary to public opinion, neither side won - even as modern superiority was being proclaimed in philosophy and the sciences, the precedence of the ancients was being reaffirmed in literature and the arts."--BOOK JACKET.