The Battle of the Books: History and Literature in the Augustan Age 9781501727641

Joseph M. Levine provides a witty and erudite account of one of the most celebrated chapters in English cultural history

121 40 49MB

English Pages 448 [447] Year 2018

Table of contents :
Contents
Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
PART ONE. LITERATURE
1. Wotton vs. Temple
2. Bentley vs. Christ Church
3. Stroke and Counterstroke
4. The Querelle
5. Ancient Greece and Modern Scholarship
6. Pope's Iliad
7. Pope and the Quarrel between the Ancients and the Moderns
8. Bentley's Milton
PART TWO. HISTORY
9. History and Theory
10. Ancients
11. Moderns
12. Ancients and Moderns
Conclusion
Index

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The Battle of the Books

The frontispiece to Swift's Battle of the Books (1710), reproduced by permission of Cornell University Libraries

Joseph M. Levine

THE BATTLE OF THE BOOKS History and Literature in the Augustan Age

Cornell University Press ITHACA AND LONDON

PUBLICATION OF THIS BOOK WAS ASSISTED BY A GRANT FROM THE PUBLICATIONS PROGRAM OF THE NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES, AN INDEPENDENT FEDERAL AGENCY.

Copyright© 1991 by Cornell University All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850. First published 1991 by Cornell University Press. First printing, Cornell Paperbacks, 1994.

International Standard Book Number o-8014-2537-9 (cloth) International Standard Book Number o-8014-8199-6 (paper) Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 9Q-55735 Printed in the United States of America Librarians: Library of Con~ress catalo.~in.~ information appears on the last pa.~e of the book.

§ The paper in this book meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.

FOR

Ollie A. Learnard

Contents

Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction

XI Xlll I

PART ONE. LITERATURE Wotton vs. Temple

13

(I) Temple's career; (2) Temple's Essay; (3) Burnet's Sacred Theory

and Fontenelle's Digression; (4) Temple's reply; (5) Preliminary skirmishes and Wotton's Reflections; (6) Temple vs. Wotton: The argument over history; (7) Wotton vs. Temple: The argument over philology 2

Bentley vs. Christ Church

47

(I) Bentley vs. Joshua Barnes; (2) Bentley and Wotton; (3) The

Christ Church wits; (4) Boyle against Bentley; (5) Wits and learned men; (6) Bentley replies: The Dissertations on the Epistles of Phalaris; (7) Bentley's argument continued; the first exchange ends in a draw

3

Stroke and Counterstroke (I) Philosophers look on: Locke and Leibniz; (2) Chronologists join the fray: William Lloyd and (3) Henry Dodwell; (4) William King joins the wits; (5) Christ Church strikes back; (6) Swift's Tale of a Tub and (7) Battle of the Books

4

The Querelle

121

(I) A lull in the battle; (2) Charles Perrault and the quarrel over

Homer; (3) Boileau leads the defense of antiquity; (4) Satire: Fran