97-) English Literature

97-) English Literature

Jonathan Swuft 

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