Battle of the Books

In Jonathan Swift's dazzling mock-epic, the great books of history do battle in a London library. Ancient authors and modern ones square off in literal combat, each defending their literary honor with sword and pen. The conflict springs from the legendary Querelle des Anciens et des Moderns: whether the writers of antiquity, Homer, Aristotle, Virgil, remain supreme, or whether contemporary thinkers have surpassed them. Swift, barely twenty-three, unleashes Homer against the moderns, and the Result is chaos worthy of the Iliad itself, complete with wounded texts, fleeing authors, and the absurdly appropriate defeat of modern pedants by ancient giants. The satire cuts in all directions: at snooty classicists who worship Latin and Greek above all else, at pretentious moderns who think themselves wiser than Plato, and at the very act of taking any of this seriously. It's intellectual combat rendered in high epic style, and the joke has never aged a day.