Anglo-Irish satirist, essayst,political pamphleteer (first for the Whigs, then for the Tories!), poet and cleric, he becameDean of St. Patrick’s Cathedralin Dublin. He is probably the foremost prose satirist in the English language with his hugesuccess Gulliver’s Travels (1726).

SECTION SUMMARY

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JONATHAN SWIFT• 1667: he was born in Dublin and his father died just two

months before he arrived.

Without steady income, his mother struggled to provide for her newborn and in an effort to give him the best upbringing possible, she gave him over to Godwin Swift, her late husband’s brother and a member of the respected professional attorney and judges group Gray’s Inn.

• 1674: his uncle enrolled him in the Kilkenny Grammar School, probably the best school in Ireland at the time, a rigorous and challenging private school.

• 1682: he commenced his undergraduate studies at Trinity College in Dublin. In 1686, he received a Bachelor of Arts degree and went on to pursue a master’s. 4

JONATHAN SWIFT• 1688: the Glorious Revolution spurred

Swift to move to England and he accepted a position as Sir William Temple’s secretary in Surrey’s Moor Park.

Temple was an important retired Whig statesman and a scholar : Swift’s talent for argument served him well but after some years in his service Swift returned to university, this time to Oxford. An increasing discord with Temple would eventually lead to Swift’s return to Ireland.

1690: he became a victim to Ménière’s disease, a disorder of the inner ear which affected his hearing and balance to an increasing degree, in one ear in particular. Characterised by fits of vertigo and giddiness, it would continue to plague himthroughout his life with progressive hearing loss.

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JONATHAN SWIFTHe met Esther Johnson, then eight years old, the fatherless daughter of one of the house-hold servants. Swift acted as her tutor and

mentor, giving her the nickname “Stella”, and the two maintained a close relationshipfor the rest of Esther’s life.

1694: ordained as an Anglican minister, he was sent to Kilroot, which he left shortly after due to the bad working conditions there.

1695: he returned to work for Sir William and completed his works The Battle of the Books (1697) and A Tale of a Tub, written for the universal improvement of mankind (1704).

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JONATHAN SWIFT 1699: when Sir William Temple died he returned to Ireland

and accepted a position in the church. During this time Esther Johnson moved to Trim, so they lived close by.

With his previous books and Dissensions in Athens and Rome (published anonymously in 1701) he became successful and won the corresponding respect as a writer.

1710: he became politically active for a short time and wrote sharp-tongued political satire. That year and the following year, he was the editor of the Tory weekly “The Examiner”.

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JONATHAN SWIFT

1713: made Dean of St. Patrick’s he wentback to Ireland. The Whigs returned to power so, disappointed for having to live “like a rat in a hole” , he wrote in support of Irish causes.

Although he was still in contact with Esther Johnson, it is documented that he engaged in a romantic relationship with Esther Vanhomrigh (whom he called “Vanessa”). His courtship with her inspired his long poem “Cadenus and Vanessa” (1726).

1724: with patriotic works like Drapier’s Letters and, a few years later, A Modest Proposal (1729) he began to be considered a national hero.

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JONATHAN SWIFT 1726: back in London, benefiting from the help of several

friends, he published anonymously Gulliver’s Travels.

The title of the book was actually much longer than this, as we will see in a few moments, and the book was an immediate hit!

Three printings were made of it in 1726 and a new printing in early 1727 as well as French,Dutch and German translations in the sameyear. It has never been out of print since!

1728: Esther Johnson died.

Swift prayed at her bedside but could not bear to be present atthe end. Death became ever present in his life from this point.

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JONATHAN SWIFT 1738 – 1742: Will Durant described Swift’s final years…

“Definite symptoms of madness appeared in 1738. In 1741 guardians were appointed to take care ofhis affairs and watch lest in his outbursts of violence he should do himself harm. In 1742 he suffered great pain from the inflammation of his left eye, which swelled to the size of an egg; five attendants had to restrain him from tearing out his eye. He went a whole yearwithout uttering a word.”

1745: Swift died in Dublin and he was laid to rest next to Esther Johnson inside St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin.

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GULLIVER’S TRAVELS (1726) Gulliver’s Travels is a novel which is both a satire on human

nature and a parody of the travellers’ tales.

A transparently anti-Whig satire with copious referencesto people and episodes of the time, its major themes are nevertheless out of time:

❑ treachery and dishonesty inside the government;

❑ petty differences between religions;

❑ corruption and corruptibility of human nature.

Published only seven years after Defoe’s wildly successfulRobinson Crusoe (as a systematic rebuttal of it!), its protagonistappears to be an amazingly modern “round character” whoturns from a cheery optimist to a pompous misanthrope. 13

THE FOUR BOOKS Book I: Gulliver is shipwrecked on Lilliput,

where he awakens to find that he has been

captured by very small people while in Book IIhe is abandoned on Brobdingnag, a land of giants, which he leaves inside a

cage snatched up by an eagle.

In Book III pirates leave him adrift at sea to discover the flying island of Laputa as well asothers inhabited by scientists, philosophers,

ghosts of historical figures while

in Book IV a mutinous crew abandons himon an island ruled by the Houyhnhnms, civilizedwise horses served by the Yahoos, dirty, despicablehuman-like creatures. 14

From the pigmies of Lilliput…

From the start the Lilliputians arouse our interest and win our liking: they ingeniously capture Gulliver, the “giant” cast on their shore, solve the problem of feeding himand make us laugh with their toy kingdom and the acrobatic skill of their politicians and courtiers…

…but in the end they prove to be proud, envious, treacherous, cruel, revengeful, jealous, and hypocritical. Their social and political systems have become corrupt and they are governed by an emperor who aims at destroying the neighbouring kingdom of Blefuscu, using Gulliver as a weapon.

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… to the giants of Brobdingnag. In Brobdingnag we meet creatures ten or

twelve times the size of Europeans, among whom Gulliver is made humiliatingly aware of his own physical insignificance. As readers we share Gulliver’s anxiety lest their moral natures be as brutish as their bodies…

…but the reverse is true. Theirs is a race of superior beings, enlightened and benevolent,who show up our ludicrousness and the immorality of our institutions, the shockingdifference between what we profess and whatwe really are. 16

From scientists & philosophers…

This third voyage is a kind of fantasia on two themes which Swift treats under a single metaphor, that of science, and the themes are politics and the abuse of reason.

Preposterous scientific projects are in progress at the Academy of Lagado, the capital of Balnirabi, to

extract sunbeams out of cucumbers

convert human excrement into its originalfood

build houses from the roof downwards to the foundation.

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… politicians & historians… So far as politics is concerned, Swift ridicules the foolishness

and selfishness of those engaged in the game of politics. There is a school of political projects at the same Academy which propose schemes or medicines to

keep legislators in a fit mental condition so that they should not talk any nonsense during legislative assembly

stimulate their memories so that they should not forget their promises to the public.

Swift also criticizes historians and historical reasearchers, those who have risen to worldly greatness by adopting shameful methods and those who long for immortality, the Struldbrugs.

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… to wise horses & despicable yahoos Houyhnhnm-land is a rationalistic paradise

and the Houyhnhnms are the embodiment of pure reason. They know neither love nor grief nor lust nor ambition. They cannot lie, and they face the processes of life, such as marriage, child-birth, accident, and death with a stoical calm…

…but their society is an aristocracy, based upon the slave labour of the Yahoos who represent Swift’s view of the bestial element in man, the unenlightened, irrational element in human nature. Gulliver, repelled by what he sees,identifies the Yahoos with men and turns a misanthrope.

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INTERPRETATIONS

The novel has been the recipient of several designations:

❑a Menippean satire characterised by attacks on mental attitudes rather than on specific individuals;

❑a children’s story, especially in the first two books where eachpart is the reverse of the preceding part;

❑ a forerunner of the modern novel in terms of storytelling and constructionbased on contrasts, progressions and shifts;

❑ even a proto-Science Fiction, in itsdystopian vision of human society.

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A DYSTOPIAN NOVEL

17th c. writers UTOPIA travellers found

IMAGINARY natural vs EUROPEAN civilisedSOCIETIES uncorrupted WORLD corrupted

Jonathan Swift DYSTOPIA Gulliver finds

IMAGINARY civilised = EUROPEAN civilisedSOCIETIES corrupted SOCIETY corrupted

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SWIFT vs GULLIVER Although in many cases Gulliver seems to be Swift’s spokes-

man, he is the first character Swift makes fun of! Gullible, ashis name suggests, he ends up being a misanthrope… whichSwift was most certainly NOT. The words of Swift’s epitaph, written in Latin by the author himself and translated by the Irish poet W. B. Yeats, say that

“Swift has sailed into his rest.

Savage indignation there

cannot lacerate his breast.

Imitate him if you dare,

world-besotted traveller.

He served human liberty.”22

The work of a madman?Far from it…

Gulliver’s Travels was written when Swift was at theheight of his intellectual powers; and the comic spirit ofthe book as a whole rules out the view that it is morbidand that it shows the mental illness of the author.

The view that he was a savage, mad, embitteredmisanthrope is largely based upon a misinterpretation ofthe last voyage.

All Swift’s satire was certainly written in anger,contempt, or disgust; but it was written to promoteself-knowledge in the faith that self-knowledgecould lead to right action.

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A MODEST PROPOSAL (1729)... A Modest Proposal, a satirical essay published by Swift

anonymously, is a case in point: far from showing disinterest in his fellow countrymen, Swift was set upon solving the nation’s societal gap, or at the very least forcing the Irish to take a harsh look at the reality of their economic conditions.

Fed up with

❑ the ineptitude of Ireland’s politicians,

❑ the degrading poverty in which a huge number of Irish citizens found themselves,

❑ the boisterous tyranny of the British

❑ the hypocrisy of the wealthy

he shocked his audience by suggesting that… 25

… to SHOCK & REFLECT. … the impoverished Irish might well ease their economic

troubles by selling their children as food to the rich since

“a young healthy child well nursed, is, at a year old, a most delicious nourishing and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt thatit will equally serve in a fricasie, or a ragoust”.

Using scientific, methodological language to present statistics of human beings, the essay progresses through a series of surprises that first shocks the reader and then causes him to think critically not only about policies, but also about motivations and values. 26

LEGACY AS A WRITER… Swift was one of the most renowned authors and political

writers of the 18th century, possibly the greatest satirist in the English language:

❑ with Gulliver’s Travels he transformed models such as utopian writing, political pamphleteering and social critique with his dark and uncompromising vision of the human condition;

❑ with A Modest Proposal he has left as his legacy the idea of encouraging political writers to make a lasting impact on their audience in order to bring about social change. 28

…& AS A MAN.The bulk of Swift’s fortune (twelve thousand pounds) was left

to found a hospital for the mentally ill, originally known as St. Patrick’s Hospital for Imbeciles, which opened in 1757, and whichstill exists today as a psychiatric hospital.

Swift’s generosity and forward-thinking vision of a ‘home for fools and mad’ left a lasting impact on mental healthcare in Ireland through the creation of SPMHS (St. Patrick’s Mental Health Services). the country’s first mental health hospitals, now Ireland’s largest independent not-for-profit mental health service provider.

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