97-) English Literature
Jonathan Swuft
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Works
Swift
was a prolific writer. The collection of his prose works (Herbert Davis, ed.
Basil Blackwell, 1965–) comprises fourteen volumes. A 1983 edition of his
complete poetry (Pat Rodges, ed. Penguin, 1983) is 953 pages long. One edition
of his correspondence (David Woolley, ed. P. Lang, 1999) fills three volumes.
The
success of Gulliver’s Travels
Swift’s
greatest satire, Gulliver’s Travels, was published in 1726. It is uncertain
when he began this work, but it appears from his correspondence that he was
writing in earnest by 1721 and had finished the whole by August 1725. Its
success was immediate, and it stands as his masterpiece. Then, and since, it
has succeeded in entertaining (and intriguing) all classes of readers. It was
completed at a time when he was close to the poet Alexander Pope and the poet
and dramatist John Gay. He had been a fellow member of their Scriblerus Club
since 1713, and through their correspondence, Pope continued to be one of his
most important connections to England.
Gulliver’s
Travels was originally published without its author’s name under the title
Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. This work, which is told in
Gulliver’s “own words,” is the most brilliant as well as the most bitter and
controversial of his satires. In each of its four books the hero, Lemuel
Gulliver, embarks on a voyage; but shipwreck or some other hazard usually casts
him up on a strange land. Book I takes him to Lilliput, where he wakes to find
himself the giant prisoner of the six-inch-high Lilliputians. Man-Mountain, as
Gulliver is called, ingratiates himself with the arrogant, self-important
Lilliputians when he wades into the sea and captures an invasion fleet from
neighbouring Blefescu; but he falls into disfavour when he puts out a fire in
the empress’ palace by urinating on it. Learning of a plot to charge him with
treason, he escapes from the island.
Book
II takes Gulliver to Brobdingnag, where the inhabitants are giants. He is cared
for kindly by a nine-year-old girl, Glumdalclitch, but his tiny size exposes
him to dangers and indignities, such as getting his head caught in a squalling
baby’s mouth. Also, the giants’ small physical imperfections (such as large
pores) are highly visible and disturbing to him. Picked up by an eagle and
dropped into the sea, he manages to return home.
In
Book III Gulliver visits the floating island of Laputa, whose absent-minded
inhabitants are so preoccupied with higher speculations that they are in
constant danger of accidental collisions. He visits the Academy of Lagado (a
travesty of England’s Royal Society), where he finds its lunatic savants
engaged in such impractical studies as reducing human excrement to the original
food. In Luggnagg he meets the Struldbruggs, a race of immortals, whose eternal
senility is brutally described.
Book
IV takes Gulliver to the Utopian land of the Houyhnhnms—grave, rational, and
virtuous horses. There is also another race on the island, uneasily tolerated
and used for menial services by the Houyhnhnms. These are the vicious and
physically disgusting Yahoos. Although Gulliver pretends at first not to
recognize them, he is forced at last to admit the Yahoos are human beings. He
finds perfect happiness with the Houyhnhnms, but as he is only a more advanced
Yahoo, he is rejected by them in general assembly and is returned to England,
where he finds himself no longer able to tolerate the society of his fellow
human beings.
Gulliver’s
Travels’s matter-of-fact style and its air of sober reality confer on it an
ironic depth that defeats oversimple explanations. Is it essentially comic, or
is it a misanthropic depreciation of humankind? Swift certainly seems to use
the various races and societies Gulliver encounters in his travels to satirize
many of the errors, follies, and frailties that human beings are prone to. The
warlike, disputatious, but essentially trivial Lilliputians in Book I and the
deranged, impractical pedants and intellectuals in Book III are shown as
imbalanced beings lacking common sense and even decency. The Houyhnhnms, by
contrast, are the epitome of reason and virtuous simplicity, but Gulliver’s own
proud identification with these horses and his subsequent disdain for his
fellow humans indicates that he too has become imbalanced, and that human
beings are simply incapable of aspiring to the virtuous rationality that
Gulliver has glimpsed.
Major
prose works
In 1708, when a cobbler named John Partridge
published a popular almanac of astrological predictions, Swift attacked
Partridge in Prediction For The Ensuing Year, a parody predicting that
Partridge would die on March 29. Swift followed up with a pamphlet issued on
March 30 claiming that Partridge had in fact died, which was widely believed
despite Partridge's statements to the contrary.
Swift's first major prose work, A Tale of a Tub,
demonstrates many of the themes and stylistic techniques he would employ in his
later work. It is at once wildly playful and humorous while at the same time
pointed and harshly critical of its targets. The Tale recounts the exploits of
three sons, representing the main threads of Christianity in England: the
Anglican, Catholic, and Nonconformist ("Dissenting") Churches. Each
of the sons receives a coat from their fathers as a bequest, with the added
instructions to make no alternations to the coats whatsoever. However, the sons
soon find that their coats have fallen out of current fashion and begin to look
for loopholes in their father's will which will allow them to make the needed
alterations. As each finds his own means of getting around their father's
admonition, Swift satirizes the various changes (and corruptions) that had
consumed all three branches of Christianity in Swift's time. Inserted into this
story, in alternating chapters, Swift includes a series of whimsical
"discourses" on various subjects.
In
1729, Swift wrote “A Modest Proposal,” supposedly written by an intelligent and
objective "political arithmetician" who had carefully studied Ireland
before making his proposal. The author calmly suggests one solution for both
the problem of overpopulation and the growing numbers of undernourished people:
breed those children who would otherwise go hungry or be mistreated and sell
them as food for the rich.
Swift's
first major prose work, A Tale of a Tub, demonstrates many of the themes and
stylistic techniques he would employ in his later work. It is at once wildly
playful and funny while being pointed and harshly critical of its targets. In
its main thread, the Tale recounts the exploits of three sons, representing the
main threads of Christianity, who receive a bequest from their father of a coat
each, with the added instructions to make no alterations whatsoever. However,
the sons soon find that their coats have fallen out of current fashion, and
begin to look for loopholes in their father's will that will let them make the
needed alterations. As each finds his own means of getting around their
father's admonition, they struggle with each other for power and dominance.
Inserted into this story, in alternating chapters, the narrator includes a
series of whimsical "digressions" on various subjects.
In
1690, Sir William Temple, Swift's patron, published An Essay upon Ancient and
Modern Learning a defence of classical writing (see Quarrel of the Ancients and
the Moderns), holding up the Epistles of Phalaris as an example. William Wotton
responded to Temple with Reflections upon Ancient and Modern Learning (1694),
showing that the Epistles were a later forgery. A response by the supporters of
the Ancients was then made by Charles Boyle (later the 4th Earl of Orrery and
father of Swift's first biographer). A further retort on the Modern side came
from Richard Bentley, one of the pre-eminent scholars of the day, in his essay
Dissertation upon the Epistles of Phalaris (1699). The final words on the topic
belong to Swift in his Battle of the Books (1697, published 1704) in which he
makes a humorous defence on behalf of Temple and the cause of the Ancients.
In
1708, a cobbler named John Partridge published a popular almanac of
astrological predictions. Because Partridge falsely determined the deaths of
several church officials, Swift attacked Partridge in Predictions for the
Ensuing Year by Isaac Bickerstaff, a parody predicting that Partridge would die
on 29 March. Swift followed up with a pamphlet issued on 30 March claiming that
Partridge had in fact died, which was widely believed despite Partridge's
statements to the contrary. According to other sources,[citation needed]
Richard Steele used the persona of Isaac Bickerstaff, and was the one who wrote
about the "death" of John Partridge and published it in The
Spectator, not Jonathan Swift.
The
Drapier's Letters (1724) was a series of pamphlets against the monopoly granted
by the English government to William Wood to mint copper coinage for Ireland.
It was widely believed that Wood would need to flood Ireland with debased
coinage in order to make a profit. In these "letters" Swift posed as
a shopkeeper—a draper—to criticise the plan. Swift's writing was so effective
in undermining opinion in the project that a reward was offered by the
government to anyone disclosing the true identity of the author. Though hardly
a secret (on returning to Dublin after one of his trips to England, Swift was
greeted with a banner, "Welcome Home, Drapier") no one turned Swift
in, although there was an unsuccessful attempt to prosecute the publisher John
Harding.[46] Thanks to the general outcry against the coinage, Wood's patent
was rescinded in September 1725 and the coins were kept out of circulation. In
"Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift" (1739) Swift recalled this as one
of his best achievements.
Gulliver's
Travels, a large portion of which Swift wrote at Woodbrook House in County
Laois, was published in 1726. It is regarded as his masterpiece. As with his
other writings, the Travels was published under a pseudonym, the fictional
Lemuel Gulliver, a ship's surgeon and later a sea captain. Some of the
correspondence between printer Benj. Motte and Gulliver's also-fictional cousin
negotiating the book's publication has survived. Though it has often been
mistakenly thought of and published in bowdlerised form as a children's book,
it is a great and sophisticated satire of human nature based on Swift's
experience of his times. Gulliver's Travels is an anatomy of human nature, a
sardonic looking-glass, often criticised for its apparent misanthropy. It asks
its readers to refute it, to deny that it has adequately characterised human
nature and society. Each of the four books—recounting four voyages to mostly
fictional exotic lands—has a different theme, but all are attempts to deflate
human pride. Critics hail the work as a satiric reflection on the shortcomings
of Enlightenment thought.
In
1729, Swift's A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People in
Ireland Being a Burden on Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them
Beneficial to the Publick was published in Dublin by Sarah Harding. It is a
satire in which the narrator, with intentionally grotesque arguments,
recommends that Ireland's poor escape their poverty by selling their children
as food to the rich: "I have been assured by a very knowing American of my
acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old
a most delicious nourishing and wholesome food ..." Following the
satirical form, he introduces the reforms he is actually suggesting by deriding
them:
Therefore
let no man talk to me of other expedients ... taxing our absentees ... using
[nothing] except what is of our own growth and manufacture ... rejecting ...
foreign luxury ... introducing a vein of parsimony, prudence and temperance ...
learning to love our country ... quitting our animosities and factions ... teaching
landlords to have at least one degree of mercy towards their tenants. ...
Therefore I repeat, let no man talk to me of these and the like expedients,
till he hath at least some glympse of hope, that there will ever be some hearty
and sincere attempt to put them into practice.
Jonathan Swift
Gulliver's Travels
Gulliver's Travels (published 1726, amended 1735),
officially titled Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World is Swift's
masterpiece, both a satire on human nature and a parody of the "travellers'
tales" literary sub-genre. It is easily Swift's most celebrated work and
one of the indisputable classics of the English language.
The book became tremendously popular as soon as it
was published (Alexander Pope quipped that "it is universally read, from
the cabinet council to the nursery") and it is likely that it has never
been out of print since its original publication. George Orwell went so far as
to declare it to be among the six most indispensable books in world literature.
Synopsis
On his first voyage, Gulliver is washed ashore after
a shipwreck, awaking to find himself a prisoner of a race of tiny people who
stand 15 centimeters high, inhabitants of the neighboring and rival countries
of Lilliput and Blefuscu. After giving assurances of his good behavior he is
given a residence in Lilliput, becoming a favorite of the court. He assists the
Lilliputians in subduing their neighbors, the Blefuscudans, but refuses to
reduce Blefuscu to a province of Lilliput, so he is charged with treason and sentenced
to be blinded. Fortunately, Gulliver easily overpowers the Lilliputian army and
escapes back home.
On his second voyage, while exploring a new country,
Gulliver is abandoned by his companions, finding himself in Brobdingnag, a land
of giants. He is then bought (as a curiosity) by the queen of Brobdingnag and
kept as a favorite at court. On a trip to the seaside, his ship is seized by a
giant eagle and dropped into the sea where he is picked up by sailors and
returned to England.
On his third voyage, Gulliver's ship is attacked by
pirates and he is abandoned on a desolate rocky island. Fortunately he is
rescued by the flying island of Laputa, a kingdom devoted to the intellectual
arts that is utterly incapable of doing anything practical. While there, he
tours the country as the guest of a low-ranking courtier and sees the ruin
brought about by blind pursuit of science without practical results. He also
encounters the Struldbrugs, an unfortunate race who are cursed to have immortal
life without immortal youth. The trip is otherwise reasonably free of incident
and Gulliver returns home, determined to stay a homebody for the rest of his
days.
Disregarding
these intentions at the end of the third part, Gulliver returns to sea where
his crew promptly mutinies. He is abandoned ashore, coming first upon a race of
hideously deformed creatures to which he conceives a violent antipathy. Shortly
thereafter he meets an eloquent, talking horse and comes to understand that the
horses (in their language "Houyhnhnm") are the rulers and the
deformed creatures ("Yahoos") are in fact human beings. Gulliver
becomes a member of the horse's household, treated almost as a favored pet, and
comes to both admire and emulate the Houyhnhnms and their lifestyle, rejecting human
beings as merely Yahoos endowed with some semblance of reason which they only
use to exacerbate and add to the vices Nature gave them. However, an assembly
of the Houyhnhnms rules that Gulliver, a Yahoo with some semblance of reason,
is a danger to their civilization, so he is expelled. He is then rescued,
against his will, by a Portuguese ship that returns him to his home in England.
He is, however, unable to reconcile himself to living among Yahoos; he becomes
a recluse, remaining in his house, largely avoiding his family, and spending
several hours a day speaking with the horses in his stables.
Legacy
Swift’s legacy
Swift’s intellectual roots lay in the rationalism
that was characteristic of late 17th-century England. This rationalism, with
its strong moral sense, its emphasis on common sense, and its distrust of
emotionalism, gave him the standards by which he appraised human conduct. At
the same time, however, he provided a unique description of reason’s weakness
and of its use by people to delude themselves. His moral principles are
scarcely original; his originality lies rather in the quality of his satiric
imagination and his literary art. Swift’s literary tone varies from the
humorous to the savage, but each of his satiric compositions is marked by
concentrated power and directness of impact. His command of a great variety of
prose styles is unfailing, as is his power of inventing imaginary episodes and
all their accompanying details. Swift rarely speaks in his own person; almost
always he states his views by ironic indiscretion through some imagined
character such as Lemuel Gulliver or the morally obtuse citizen of “A Modest
Proposal.” Thus Swift’s descriptive passages reflect the minds that are
describing just as much as the things described. Pulling in different
directions, this irony creates the tensions that are characteristic of Swift’s
best work, and reflects his vision of humanity’s ambiguous position between
bestiality and reasonableness.
Literary
John Ruskin named him as one of the three people in
history who were the most influential for him. George Orwell named him as one
of the writers he most admired, despite disagreeing with him on almost every
moral and political issue. Modernist poet Edith Sitwell wrote a fictional
biography of Swift, titled I Live Under a Black Sun and published in 1937. A.
L. Rowse wrote a biography of Swift, essays on his works, and edited the Pan
Books edition of Gulliver's Travels.
Literary scholar Frank Stier Goodwin wrote a full
biography of Swift: Jonathan Swift – Giant in Chains, issued by Liveright
Publishing Corporation, New York (1940, 450pp, with Bibliography).
In 1982, Soviet playwright Grigory Gorin wrote a
theatrical fantasy called The House That Swift Built based on the last years of
Jonathan Swift's life and episodes of his works. The play was filmed by
director Mark Zakharov in the 1984 two-part television movie of the same
name.[citation needed] Jake Arnott features him in his 2017 novel The Fatal
Tree. A 2017 analysis of library holdings data revealed that Swift is the most
popular Irish author, and that Gulliver’s Travels is the most widely held work
of Irish literature in libraries globally.
The first woman to write a biography of Swift was
Sophie Shilleto Smith, who published Dean Swift in 1910.
Swift once stated that "satire is a sort of
glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their
own." Utilizing grotesque logic—for example, that Irish poverty can be
solved by the breeding of infants as food for the rich—Swift commented on attitudes
and policies of his day with an originality and forcefulness that influenced
later novelists such as Mark Twain, H. G. Wells, and George Orwell.
"Swiftian" satire is a term coined for especially outlandish and
sardonic parody.
Although his many pamphlets and attacks on religious
corruption and intellectual laziness are dated for most modern readers,
Gulliver's Travels has remained a popular favorite both for its humorous
rendering of human foibles and its adventurous fantasy.
Eponymous places
Swift crater, a crater on Mars's moon Deimos, is
named after Jonathan Swift, who predicted the existence of the moons of Mars.
In
honour of Swift's long-time residence in Trim, there are several monuments in
the town marking his legacy. Most notable is Swift's Street, named after him.
Trim also holds a recurring festival in honour of Swift, called the Trim Swift
Festival.
Essays, Tracts, Pamphlets, Periodicals
"A Meditation upon a Broomstick"
(1703-1710)
"A Tritical Essay upon the Faculties of the
Mind" (1707-1711)
The Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers (1708-1709): Full
text: Univ. of Adelaide
"An Argument against Abolishing
Christianity" (1708-1711): Full text: Univ. of Adelaide
The Intelligencer (with Thomas Sheridan) (1710-????):
Text: Project Gutenberg
The Examiner (1710): Texts: Ourcivilisation.com,
Project Gutenberg
"A Proposal for Correcting, Improving and
Ascertaining the English Tongue" (1712): Full texts: Jack Lynch, Univ. of
Virginia
"On the Conduct of the Allies" (1713)
"Hints Toward an Essay on Conversation" (1713):
Full text: Bartleby.com
"A Letter to a Young Gentleman, Lately Entered
into Holy Orders" (1720)
"A Letter of Advice to a Young Poet"
(1721): Full text: Bartleby.com
The Drapier's Letters (1724, 1725): Full text:
Project Gutenberg
"Bon Mots de Stella" (1726): a curiously
irrelevant appendix to "Gulliver's Travels"
"An Essay on the Fates of Clergymen": Full
text: JaffeBros
"A Treatise on Good Manners and Good
Breeding": Full text: Bartleby.com
"On the Death of Esther Johnson": Full
text: Bartleby.com
"An
Essay On Modern Education": Full text: JaffeBros
"The
Publick Spirit of the Whigs, set forth in their generous encouragement of the
author of the crisis" (1714)
"A
Modest Proposal", perhaps the most notable satire in English, suggesting
that the Irish should engage in cannibalism. (Written in 1729)
"A
modest address to the wicked authors of the present age. Particularly the
authors of Christianity not founded on argument; and of The resurrection of
Jesus considered" (1743–45?)
Poems
"Ode
to the Athenian Society", Swift's first publication, printed in The
Athenian Mercury in the supplement of Feb 14, 1691.
Poems
of Jonathan Swift, D.D. Texts at Project Gutenberg: Volume One, Volume Two
"Baucis
and Philemon" (1706–09): Full text: Munseys
"A
Description of the Morning" (1709): Full annotated text: U of Toronto;
Another text: U of Virginia[permanent dead link]
"A
Description of a City Shower" (1710): Full text: U of Virginia[permanent
dead link]
"Cadenus
and Vanessa" (1713): Full text: Munseys
"Phillis,
or, the Progress of Love" (1719): Full text: theotherpages.org
Stella's
birthday poems:
1719.
Full annotated text: U of Toronto
1720.
Full text: U of Virginia[permanent dead link]
1727.
Full text: U of Toronto
"The
Progress of Beauty" (1719–20): Full text: OurCivilisation.com
"The
Progress of Poetry" (1720): Full text: theotherpages.org
"A
Satirical Elegy on the Death of a Late Famous General" (1722): Full text:
U of Toronto
"To
Quilca, a Country House not in Good Repair" (1725): Full text: U of
Toronto
"Advice
to the Grub Street Verse-writers" (1726): Full text: U of Toronto
"The
Furniture of a Woman's Mind" (1727)
"On
a Very Old Glass" (1728): Full text: Gosford.co.uk
"A
Pastoral Dialogue" (1729): Full text: Gosford.co.uk
"The
Grand Question debated Whether Hamilton's Bawn should be turned into a Barrack
or a Malt House" (1729): Full text: Gosford.co.uk
"On
Stephen Duck, the Thresher and Favourite Poet" (1730): Full text: U of
Toronto
"Death
and Daphne" (1730): Full text: OurCivilisation.com
"The
Place of the Damn'd" (1731): Full text at the Wayback Machine (archived 27
October 2009)
"A
Beautiful Young Nymph Going to Bed" (1731): Full annotated text: Jack
Lynch; Another text: U of Virginia[permanent dead link]
"Strephon
and Chloe" (1731): Full annotated text: Jack Lynch; Another text: U of
Virginia Archived 30 May 2014 at the Wayback Machine
"Helter
Skelter" (1731): Full text: OurCivilisation.com
"Cassinus
and Peter: A Tragical Elegy" (1731): Full annotated text: Jack Lynch
"The
Day of Judgment" (1731): Full text
"Verses
on the Death of Dr. Swift, D.S.P.D." (1731–32): Full annotated texts: Jack
Lynch, U of Toronto; Non-annotated text:: U of Virginia[permanent dead link]
"An
Epistle to a Lady" (1732): Full text: OurCivilisation.com
"The
Beasts' Confession to the Priest" (1732): Full annotated text: U of
Toronto
"The
Lady's Dressing Room" (1732): Full annotated text: Jack Lynch
"On
Poetry: A Rhapsody" (1733)
"The
Puppet Show"
"The
Logicians Refuted"
Correspondence,
personal writings
"When
I Come to Be Old" – Swift's resolutions. (1699)
A
Journal to Stella (1710–13): Full text (presented as daily entries): The
Journal to Stella; Extracts: OurCivilisation.com;
Letters:
Selected
Letters
To
Oxford and Pope: OurCivilisation.com
The
Correspondence of Jonathan Swift, D.D. Edited by David Woolley. In four
volumes, plus index volume. Frankfurt am Main; New York : P. Lang, c. 1999 –
c. 2007.
Sermons,
prayers
Three
Sermons and Three Prayers. Full text: U of Adelaide, Project Gutenberg
Three
Sermons: I. on mutual subjection. II. on conscience. III. on the trinity. Text:
Project Gutenberg
Writings
on Religion and the Church. Text at Project Gutenberg: Volume One, Volume Two
"The
First He Wrote Oct. 17, 1727." Full text: Worldwideschool.org
"The
Second Prayer Was Written Nov. 6, 1727." Full text: Worldwideschool.org
Miscellany
Directions
to Servants (1731): Full text: Jonathon Swift Archive[permanent dead link]
A
Complete Collection of Genteel and Ingenious Conversation (1738)
"Thoughts
on Various Subjects." Full text: U of Adelaide Archived 14 October 2007 at
the Wayback Machine
Historical
Writings: Project Gutenberg
Swift
quotes at Bartleby: Bartleby.com – 59 quotations, with notes
The
Benefit of Farting Explained, published under the pseudonym Don Fartinando
Puff-Indorst, Professor of Bumbast in the University of Crackow.
Prose
Works
A
Tale of a Tub 1696 (published 1704) , The Battle of the Books 1697 (published
1704) , "When I Come to Be Old" (1699) , "A Letter Concerning
the Sacramental Test" (1708) , "Sentiments of a Church of England
Man" (1708) , "Bickerstaff/Partridge" papers (1708) , ""Proposal
for the Advancement of Religion" (1709) , Examiner (1710 - ) , The Conduct
of the Allies (1711) , An Argument Against Abolishing Christianity (1711) , Correcting
the English Tongue (1712) ,Public Spirit of the Whigs (1714)
A
Letter of Advice to a Young Poet (1720) , The Drapier's Letters to the People
of Ireland Against Receiving Wood's Halfpence (1724) , Gulliver's Travels
(1726) , A Modest Proposal (1729) , A Complete Collection of Genteel and
Ingenious Conversation (1738)
Sermons,
Prayers
Three
Sermons and Three Prayers. Full text: Project Gutenberg
Three
Sermons: I. on mutual subjection. II. on conscience. III. on the trinity. Text:
Project Gutenberg
Writings
on Religion and the Church. Text at Project Gutenberg: Volume One, Volume Two
"The
First He Wrote Oct. 17, 1727." Full text: Worldwideschool.org
"The
Second Prayer Was Written Nov. 6, 1727." Full text: Worldwideschool.org
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