Classic to Modern English Literature

"The Battle of the Books" is a short satire written by Jonathan Swift and published as part of the prolegomena to his A Tale of a Tub in 1704. It depicts a literal battle between books in the King's Library (housed in St James's Palace at the time of the writing), as ideas and authors struggle for supremacy. Because of the satire, "The Battle of the Books" has become a term for the Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns. This literary contest was re-enacted in miniature in England when Sir William Temple published an answer to Fontenelle entitled Of Ancient and Modern Learning in 1690. The prose is a parody of heroic poetry along the lines of Samuel Butler's parody of battle in Hudibras.As a set piece or topos of 18th-century satire, the "Battle of the Books" was a standard shorthand for both the Quarrel of the Ancients and Moderns and the era of Swift's battle with William Wotton. The Royal Society of London was founded in 1660 and played