PAPER NO.102
LITERATURE OF NEO-CLASSICAL PERIOD
TOPIC:
JONATHAN SWIFT LIFE AND WORK
NAME:PANDYA
MAYURI.M
ROLL NO. 25
ENROLL NO.4069206420210023
EMAIL ID: pandyamayuri0610@gmail.com
BATCH-M.A
2021-2023
SUBMITTED TO
–S.B GARDI DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH
MAHARAJA KRISHNAKUMARSINHJI UNIVERSITY
JONATHAN SWIFT
“We have just enough religion
to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.”
-Jonathan
Swift
BORN: 30
November 1667, Dublin, Ireland
DIED:
19 October 1745, Dublin,
Ireland
He was an Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist,
political pamphleteer (first for the Whigs, then for the Tories), poet and
Anglican cleric who became Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, hence his common sobriquet, "Dean
Swift".
Swift is
remembered for works such as A Tale of a Tub (1704), An Argument Against
Abolishing Christianity (1712), Gulliver's Travels (1726), and A Modest
Proposal (1729). He is regarded by the Encyclopædia Britannica as the foremost
prose satirist in the English language, and is less well known for his poetry.
He originally published all of his works under pseudonyms—such as Lemuel
Gulliver, Isaac Bickerstaff, M. B. Drapier—or anonymously. He was a master of
two styles of satire, the Horatian and Juvenalian styles.
His deadpan,
ironic writing style, particularly in A Modest Proposal, has led to such satire
being subsequently termed "Swiftian".
Early life:
Jonathan Swift was born in Dublin, Ireland, on November 30,
1667. The son of an English lawyer, he grew up there in the care of his uncle
before attending Trinity College at the age of fourteen, where he stayed for
seven years, graduating in 1688. In that year, he became the secretary for Sir
William Temple, an English politician and member of the Whig party. In 1694, he
took religious orders in the Church of Ireland and then spent a year as a
country parson. He then spent further time in the service of Temple before
returning to Ireland to become the chaplain of the Earl of Berkeley. Meanwhile,
he had begun to write satires on the political and religious corruption
surrounding him, working on A Tale of a Tub, which
supports the position of the Anglican Church against its critics on the left
and the right, and The Battle of the Books, which
argues for the supremacy of the classics against modern thought and literature.
He also wrote a number of political pamphlets in favor of the Whig party. In
1709 he went to London to campaign for the Irish church but was unsuccessful.
After some conflicts with the Whig party, mostly because of Swift’s strong
allegiance to the church, he became a member of the more conservative Tory
party in 1710.
Unfortunately for Swift, the Tory government fell out of power
in 1714 and Swift, despite his fame for his writings, fell out of favor. Swift,
who had been hoping to be assigned a position in the Church of England, instead
returned to Dublin. During his brief time in England, Swift had become friends
with writers such as Alexander Pope, and during a meeting of their literary
club, the Martinis Scribblers Club, they decided to write satires of modern
learning. The “third voyage” described in his best-known work, Gulliver’s Travels, is assembled from the work Swift
did during this time. However, the final work was not completed until 1726, and
the narrative of the third voyage was actually the last one completed. After
his return to Ireland, Swift became a staunch supporter of the Irish against
English attempts to weaken their economy and political power, writing pamphlets
such as the satirical A Modest Proposal, in
which he suggests that the Irish problems of famine and overpopulation could be
easily solved by having the babies of poor Irish subjects sold as delicacies to
feed the rich.
Swift's Ireland was
a country that had been effectively controlled by England for nearly 500 years.
The Stuarts had established a Protestant governing aristocracy amidst the
country's relatively poor Catholic population. Denied union with England in 1707
(when Scotland was granted it), Ireland continued to suffer under English trade
restrictions and found the authority of its own Parliament in Dublin severely
limited. Swift, though born a member of Ireland's colonial ruling class, came
to be known as one of the greatest of Irish patriots. He, however, considered
himself more English than Irish, and his loyalty to Ireland was often
ambivalent in spite of his staunch support for certain Irish causes. The
complicated nature of his own relationship with England may have left him
particularly sympathetic to the injustices and exploitation Ireland suffered at
the hands of its more powerful neighbor.
Although Swift's disgust with the state of the nation continued
to increase, A Modest Proposal was the last of his essays about Ireland. Swift
wrote mostly poetry in the later years of his life, and he died in 1745.
Vision is the art of seeing things invisible.”
-Jonathan Swift
A MODERN PROPOSAL AND OTHER SATIRE
Early
Years and Education
Jonathan Swift was
born into a poor family that included his mother (Abigail) and his sister
(Jane). His father, a noted clergyman in England, 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 (probably uncles), while she returned to her family in England
(Leicester). 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.
This is open to conjecture, but the story contributes to the lack of
information available regarding Swift's childhood.
Beginning in 1673,
Swift attended Kilkenny Grammar School, where he enjoyed reading and literature
and excelled especially in language study. In 1682, Swift entered Trinity
College where he received a B.A. by "special grace," a designation
for students who did not perform very well while there. Upon leaving Trinity
College, Swift went to England to work as a secretary (a patronage position)
for Sir William Temple. In 1692, Swift received an M.A. from Oxford; in 1702,
he received a D.D. (Doctor of Divinity) from Dublin University.
Swift's
Career
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 (Anglican Church) and assigned as Vicar (parish priest)
of Kilroot, a church near Belfast (in Northern 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.
In
1700, Swift became the Vicar of Laracor, Ireland, and he was also appointed
pretend (an honorary clergyman serving in a cathedral) at St. Patrick's
Cathedral in Dublin. In 1707, Swift was appointed as an emissary to the Church
of Ireland, and in 1713, he was appointed as Dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral in
Dublin. Throughout all this time, and, indeed, after his appointment as Dean of
St. Patrick's, Swift continued writing satirically in various genres, including
both prose and poetry, using various forms to address different causes,
including personal, behavioral, philosophical, political, religious, civic, and
others.
Swift's
Major Literary Works
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