Jonathan Swift

Asighment - Paper 102

Name: Insiyafatema Alvani 

Batch: M.A Sem:1

Roll no: 12

Paper Name: Literature of the Neoclassical Period 

Subject Code: 22393

E-mail: insiyafatemaalvani@gmail.com

Submitted to: Smt S.B Gardi Department of English MKBU

1) Jonathan Swift as a Satirist

Born date - 30 November 1667

Death date - 19 October 1745 

Resting place - St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin

Occupation - Satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer, poet, priest

Notable works -

• A Tale of a Tub
• Drapier's Letters
• Gulliver's Travels
• A Modest Proposal 

"Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own."

                      -Jonathan Swift

Early Life & Education:

Jonathan Swift was born in Dublin, Ireland. He is an Anglo- Irish poet, Satirist, essayist and political pamphleteer. He was born into a poor family that included his mother and his sister. His father had died seven months before Jonathan's birth. There is not much known of Swift's childhood, and what is reported is not always agreed upon by biographers. What is accepted, however, is that Jonathan's mother, after the death of her husband, left the children to be raised by relatives, while she returned to her family in England. It is also reported that Swift, as a baby, was taken by a nurse to England where he remained for three years before being returned to his family. 

He spent much of his early adult life in England. It was this later stage when he would write most of his greatest works. Best known as the author of A Modest Proposal (1729), Gulliver’s Travels (1726), and A Tale Of A Tub (1704), Swift is widely acknowledged as the greatest prose satirist in the history of English literature. Swift’s extended family had several interesting literary connections, his grandmother, Elizabeth Swift was the niece of Sir Erasmus Dryden, grandfather of the poet John Dryden. The same grandmother’s aunt, Katherine Dryden, was a first cousin of Elizabeth, wife of Sir Walter Raleigh. His great-great grandmother, Margaret Swift, was the sister of Francis Godwin, author of 'The Man in the Moone', which influenced parts of Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. His uncle, Thomas Swift, married a daughter of the poet and playwright Sir William Davenant. Swift’s uncle served as Jonathan’s benefactor, sending him to Trinity College Dublin, where he earned his BA and befriended writer William Congreve. Swift suffered a stroke in 1742. He was buried at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin. 

Early works:

Swift’s poetry has a relationship either by interconnections or reactions against the poetry of his contemporaries and predecessors. He was probably influenced by the Restoration writers John Wilmot. He may have picked up pointers from the Renaissance poets John Donne and Sir Philip Sidney. Beside these minor borrowings of his contemporaries, his debts are almost negligible. In the Augustan Age. His poetic contribution was strikingly original. 

From approximately 1689 to 1694, Swift was employed as a secretary to Sir William Temple in Moor Park, Surrey, England. In 1694, he was ordained as a priest in the Church of Ireland. In 1696, he returned to working with Sir William Temple, and in 1699, after the death of Sir William, he became chaplain to Lord Berkley. After a period working as personal assistant to the English diplomat William Temple, he privately tutored Temple’s young family friend Esther Johnson, the ‘Stella’ to whom many of Swift’s poems are addressed. He also wrote such a great work, producing works like 'The Battle of the Books', 'of a clash between Ancient and Modern books' and the ideas contained in them. He visited Oxford in 1691. In 1692, with Temple's assistance, he received an M. A. degree from that University, and published his first poem. After reading this poem John Dryden, a distant relation, is said to have remarked

"Cousin Swift, you will never be a poet." 

In reading Swift’s poems, one is first impressed with their apparent spareness of allusion and poetic device. Anyone can tell that a particular poem is powerful or vital. A few recent critics have carefully studied his use of allusion and image, but with only partial success. It still seems justified to conclude that Swift’s straightforward poetic style seldom calls for close analysis, his allusions seldom bring a whole literary past back to life, and his images are not very interesting in themselves. In general, Swift’s verses read faster than John Dryden’s or Alexander Pope’s. He apparently intends to sweep the reader along by the logic of the argument to the several conclusions he puts forth. 

Scriblerus Club:

Jonathan Swift was a member of this club. This is the 18th-century British literary club whose founding members were the brilliant Tory wits Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, John Gay, Thomas Parnell, and John Arbuthnot.The name Martin was taken from John Dryden’s comic character Sir Martin Mar-all, whose name had become synonymous with absurd error; Scriblerus was a reference to scribler, the contemporary term of contempt for a talentless writer. The collaboration of the five writers on the Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus began as early as 1713, in London. When they were separated, they pursued their project through correspondence. The zest, energy, and time that these five highly individualistic talents put into their joint enterprise may be gauged by Pope’s statement in a letter to Swift, “The top of my own ambition is to contribute to that great work 'The Memoirs', and I shall translate Homer by the by.” But only Pope and Swift lived to see the publication of the 'Memoirs'. It was published in 1741.

Golden Age of satire:

English literature in the 18th century is mainly satirical in tone and style. There is satire in poetry, in drama, in prose as well as in the essay and novel. Indeed, it is a great age of prose satire, and Jonathan Swift, the greatest of prose satirists in English, belongs to this period. Swift and his writings are usually considered a part of the Augustan era of British literature. The end of censorship in 1695 in England led to a dramatic change in the way people read and consumed political information. A decline in illiteracy and a 'print explosion' of pamphlets, journals, newspapers and ballads fed a public eager for news, comment, rumor and gossip. Satire emerges and recedes in different literary periods in England, but its dominant period was the 18th century which is also known as 'The Golden Age Of Satirical Writing'. Satire becomes an important and effective method of drawing attention to the ways in which human behavior falls short of his ideals, and of trying to correct that, within an accepted political and social framework.

Enlightenment writers Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift used different mediums of satire, different types of logic, and different targets of ridicule in order to shine a light on separate aspects of British society, providing much-needed criticism of the profuse moral corruption of a society that sometimes seemed to forget the true ideals of its age. Pope  and Swift, well known for their sharply perceptive works, both looked to rhetorical masters of the rational, classical past and their separate satirical archetypes for inspiration. This course aims to look at the development of British politics in the 'long eighteenth century' through the lens of both literary and visual satire. Although the techniques and development of the medium will be touched upon this is a secondary consideration compared to its impact on the public sphere. 

The course ends with the reform act of 1832 and the close of the long eighteenth century. Although satire itself did not end at this time, the beginning of democratic politics changed satirical priorities and focus. Humorous magazines like Punch and later Private Eye would begin to cater to this larger and more educated audience. 

Jonathan Swift as a Satirist:

Here i would like to share a small video about Jonathan Swift.

While writing notable poems throughout his career, Swift is primarily known today for being a master of satire. Satire is a form of literature that ridicules immorality, corruption, and foolishness through irony, sarcasm, Lampoon, caricature and humor. Satirists reveal human follies. The satirist is fed up with the existing condition of society and intends to make complete overhauling of the social structure using ironical expressions. The 18th century provided a fertile ground for the development of satire in England. The Literature of the period was entirely confined to the depiction of activities happening around the royal circle. Coffee houses emerged as the significant power centers to discuss political activities. 

Almost all the major writers of this period took keen interest in the composition of satirical works. Prominent among those being John Dryden, Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift. They wrote basically political satires to express their dissatisfaction over the existing socio-political condition of English society. Swift was a great scholarly genius .But his talent was not recognised by English society. This growing ignorance of his genuine demands sown the seeds of dissent in him and turned rebellious against royalty for elevating those having lesser talent to high pedestal. Through his successive works Swift has highlighted the corruption prevailing in various sectors. Swift was an staunch supporter of the whigs who were unfortunately voted out of power which virtually sealed his prospect of a significant position. 

Swift's satire is merely the weapon of exaggeration, it is important to note that exaggeration is only one facet of his satiric method. Swift uses mock seriousness and understatement, he parodies and burlesques, he presents a virtue and then turns it into a vice. Swift's first major work of satire, 'A Tale of the Tub' railed against the numerous and gross corruptions in religion and learning, criticizing who he called "religious enthusiasts." Two of his most famous works, however, are the essay 'A Modest Proposal' and the book 'Gulliver's Travels'.

Gulliver's Travels:

Swift’s greatest satire, 'Gulliver’s Travels' was published in 1726. Its success was immediate, and it stands as his masterpiece. It has succeeded in entertaining 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. 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. It was most popular among those who were indicted, that is, politicians, scientists, philosophers, and Englishmen in general. Swift was roasting people, and they were eager for the banquet.

Gulliver’s Travels’s matter-of-fact style and its air of sober reality confer on it an ironic depth that defeats over simple explanations. 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. Swift's main purpose in Gulliver's Travels was to illustrate how the English government and society needed a reformation. As an Irish patriot and a former admirer of the English government and life, Swift now sees England and all its glory in a very different way. 

'Tale Of A Tub':

Jonathan Swift's Tale of the Tub is a brilliant failure. It is a prose satire intended as a defense of the Anglican church, but it was widely interpreted by contemporary readers as an attack on all religion. At the time of writing it, Swift was a junior Anglican clergyman hoping for substantial preference in the Church.'Tale of The Tub' published in 1704. It is the first and perhaps the most difficult Satire by Jonathan Swift. The narrative is written using a complex though playful technique of interlinking stories concerning the lives of three brothers. The story digresses into separate parodies throughout, and is arranged in a fragmentary style, with each section dealing with a unique but pertinent topic. These include Catholicism, Anglicanism and dissenting religious sects.Tale engages directly with the debates concerning the ‘Ancients and Moderns’ that raged during the early 1700s. He compared with the older and established wisdom of Greek and Roman writers. In a well-known French and English literary debate that began during the 17th century, the "ancients" argued that Greek and Roman classical literature provided the only existing literary models of distinction. In contrast, the "moderns" argued that other such examples outside of the classics existed. According to Swift, the fascination with systems that characterized the Enlightenment led to rigid and pedantic thinking and, even worse, to rigid and pedantic writing.

Narrators’ voices and literary genres switch from section to section as a way of taking the work in radically new directions. Swift also concentrates his satirical fire on the new literary and publishing experiments that emerged in the early 18th century. The aspect of allegory is evident in the abuse of the coat, which showed the desire and corruption activities in the religion. In the Tale, Swift uses the analogy of the three brothers, Martin, Peter and Jack, to represent, respectively, the Anglican Church, the Catholic Church, and the Low Church, or Dissenters. He is trying to demonstrate that the spiritual practices of the Catholic Church and dissenting sects were based on a false interpretation of the true Word, the Bible. However, the sweep of Swift's irony in the book, and, the destabilizing and confusing nature of its changes in satiric personae meant that many of his contemporaries read the Tale as an attack on all religion.

One of the things that makes the Tale difficult to interpret for that the work attacks multiple things of things at the same time: it's an allegory about religious differences; it's a satire on pedantry and false scholarship; it's a parody of the contemporary book trade; it has attached to it two further treatises, the 'Battle of the Books', and the 'Mechanical Operation of the Spirit'. This essay will examine notions of authorship, intertextuality, originality, and the relationship between parody and allegory, and try to determine how all these components fit together. 

Conclusion:

Swift was certainly not one of the optimists typical of his century. He did not believe that the Age of Science was the triumph that a great majority of his countrymen believed it to be. Science and reason needed limits, and they needed a good measure of humanism. 

Jonathan Swift uses satire to bring light to the major issues that the society faced during his period. The Modest Proposal expresses the aspect of poverty that the Irish people were experiencing. He gave a satirized suggestion that aimed at reducing poverty and improving the economy of the nation. Several individuals misinterpreted his work on the Tale of Tub since they claimed that it was an attack on all the churches. Gulliver’s Travels was meant to express the cultural aspects of society from different perspectives. He also expresses the need for society as it helps prevent one from loneliness. Despite the challenging situations, Swift did not stop to expose the evil in society and to fight for the wellbeing of the Irish people. 

Thanks for visiting my blog!

Words -2, 475

Images - 5

Video - 1