Abstract
OR MANY contemporary writers, the essential difference between the of previous centuries and the of modern times is defined by their relationship to the past: the moderns ... of other centuries appear devoted to their past history, while our seem to have achieved a break with the past.' This view is surely a narrow one. It neglects to show how modern distancing from the past derives from links that attach it to the past. A second problem is the awareness of past writers of the contingency of their own period, an awareness often expressed as a desire to break with their own past. This problematic of new and old was given shape by several French Renaissance poets. Though the poets of the Renaissance were less naive than our moderns, they put forward theories of imitation that dramatized a break with the Middle
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