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Sweetness and light is an English idiom that today is used in common speech, generally with mild irony, to describe insincere courtesy. For example: ''The two had been fighting for a month, but around others it was all sweetness and light''.〔Christine Ammer, ''The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms'' (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997).〕 Originally, however "sweetness and light" term had a special use in literary and cultural criticism to mean "pleasing and instructive", which in classical theory was considered to be the aim and justification of poetry.〔English for ''dulce et utile'' (literally "sweet and useful") from Horace's ''Ars Poetica'' (18 B.C.E.)〕 Jonathan Swift, the author of ''Gulliver's Travels'', first used the phrase in his mock-heroic prose satire, "The Battle of the Books" (1704), a defense of Classical learning (1704), which he published as a prolegomenon to his ''A Tale of a Tub''. It gained widespread currency in the Victorian era, when English poet and essayist Matthew Arnold picked it up as the title of the first section of his 1869 book ''Culture and Anarchy: An Essay in Political and Social Criticism'', where "sweetness and light" stands for beauty and intelligence, the two key components of an excellent culture. ==Genesis of the phrase== "The Battle of the Books" spoofed the famous seventeenth-century Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns, a controversy that had raged first in France and then, less intensely, in England, about which was better the Ancient or Modern learning. Should people still model their writings and artistic productions on Greek and Latin authors? Or should they study the (moderns from the Renaissance on), who used living vernacular languages (not dead ones) and produced practical inventions, and new artistic genres that could be read by everyone. In ''On Ancient and Modern Learning'' (1697), Swift's patron, the urbane Sir William Temple, had weighed in on the losing side, that of the Ancients, repeating the famous paradox used by Newton that we moderns see further only because we are dwarves standing on the shoulders of giants. Swift has the books come to life and step down from the library shelves to stage a mock-Homeric battle, while the goddess Criticism, a hideous hag, intervenes on the side of her beloved "Moderns" in the manner of the Olympians of yore. Midway through the story, Aesop, an ancient book, stumbles on a debate between a bee and a spider. The spider claims that the bee creates nothing of its own, whereas the spider is an original creator who "spins and spits wholly from himself, and scorns to own any obligation or assistance from without" and his web is a triumph of architecture and mathematics. The bee counters that the spider's web is spun from digested flies and other dirt and that all the spider really contributes is his poison. Bees range far and wide to search out the very best flowers, which they do not harm, while the spider only moves four inches and feeds on insects and other "vermin of the age".〔The age-old comparison of artistic creation to the bee gathering flowers derives from Seneca's Moral letters to Lucilius, No 84.〕 Aesop judges the argument. The ancient writers, Aesop says, are like bees who fill their "hives with honey and wax, thus furnishing mankind with the two noblest of things, which are sweetness and light."〔Jonathan Swift, ''Gulliver's Travels, A Tale of a Tub, The Battle of the Books'' (New York: Modern Library, 1931) pag. 532.〕 The Ancients "are content with the bee to pretend to nothing of () own, beyond…flights and…language."〔Jonathan Swift, "The Battle of the Books", p. 532.〕 That is, imitation of Ancient authors results in works filled with delight (sweetness) and moral wisdom (light). Later writers, notably Matthew Arnold used the phrase "sweetness and light", to designate the positive effects of a (predominantly classical) humanistic culture in arts and letters (without Swift's emphasis on originality versus imitation). 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Sweetness and light」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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