Intro to Jonathan Swift and Gullivers Travels

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Intro to Jonathan Swift and Gullivers Travels
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Jonathan Swift, 1667-1745

• Anglo-irish member of the ascendency (the
  political, economic, and social domination of
  Ireland by great landowners, establishment
  clergy, and professionals
• Dean of St. Patricks church, Dublin)
• Associated with Martinus Scriblerus Club
• --Tory Whitsincluded Samuel Johson and
  Alexander Pope
• After Tories lose power, Swift turns his energies
  to defending the Irish people who are generally
  treated as a whipping post by the English (Roddy
  Doyle The Irish are the niggers of Europe.)
• Never wanted to be in Ireland feel like Im a
  rat dying in a hole
• A devout Christian but a moralist studied the
  relationship between man and the moral world
• Gullivers Travels published in 1726 widely
  considered to be Swifts masterpiece

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British Political Parties

• Tories aristocracy party of court supported by
  landed gentry and country clergy considered
  conservatives of period supporters of crown,
  opposed toleration of dissenters from Anglican
  church
• Whigs opposed Tories merchants, nobles,
  bishops, dissenters and supporters of commerce

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Robert Walpole

• First prime minister of England
• Whig
• Greatly expanded international trade
• First modern (corrupt) politician
• FlimnapRobert Walpole

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Satire

• Def the literary art of diminishing or
  derogating a subject by making it ridiculous and
  evoking toward it attitudes of amusement,
  contempt, scorn, or indignation. It is distinct
  from the comic since comedy evokes laughter as an
  end in itself.

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Types of Satire

• Horatian satire is  tolerant, witty, wise and
  self-effacing, general
• Juvenalian satire is angry, caustic, resentful,
  personal
• Is GT Horatian or Juvenalian? Support your
  answers with textual examples.

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Juvenalian satire

• p. 133
• I cannot but conclude the bulk of your natives
  to be the most pernicious race of little odious
  vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon
  the surface of the earth.